”We will prove that olive oils from Dalmatia are some of the best in the world”, swore 36-year-old Tomislav Duvnjak, a successful olive grower and civil engineer from Vodice.
His one-year-old promise was fulfilled at the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition in 2021, the world’s most prestigious competition in olive oil quality.
”As for the quality of olive oils, we are among the four best countries in the world”, said Duvnjak, who won a gold and silver award with Vodice DOO.
Although Croatia cannot compete with Spain, Italy and Greece in terms of production, Duvnjak and many other producers believe that they can with their quality. In the farming year 2020/21. Croatia has produced 4,600 tonnes of olive oil, about 0.15 percent of the total global share and a fraction of what Europe’s largest producers produce annually.
Tomislav Duvnjak organized local producers to help them enter the International Competition in New York (NYIOOC). The result was a record catch for the coastal Croatian region.
The ultimate goal is to bring Dalmatia to the level of the best olive growing region in the world, and then, together with our Istria, make Croatia a brand .- Tomislav Duvnjak, owner, Vodice doo “As for the quality of olive oils, we are among the four best countries in the world” , said Duvnjak, who won a gold and a silver award with Vodice DOO.
However, 1,171 extra virgin olive oils from 28 countries were submitted to the NYIOOC and 105 from Croatia. Of these, 53 are from Dalmatia – one of Croatia’s four historic regions stretching along the southwest coast – and 52 from Istria. For comparison, 60 samples arrived in New York from Croatia in 2020, of which more than 80 percent were Istrian olive growers.
Croatian producers earned 49 awards that year, of which 39 went to Istrians and 10 to Dalmatians. This year, out of 105 samples (almost 75 percent more than last year), 67 gold and 20 silver awards went to Croatian producers. More than half of the total number of awards – 35 gold and 13 silver – were won by Dalmatian olive growers. In the meantime, Istrian producers have earned 39 awards, of which 32 gold and seven silver. “Istria has confirmed its reputation, but we have also proven that we have quality”, said Ivica Vlatković, who once again won two gold awards for his monoculture Šoltanka and a mixture of Coratina and Leccina. However, Dalmatian producers are no longer represented only by him and a few others. This, he points out, is the first great collective success of Dalmatian oils, a success that will be remembered and written in the history of local olive growing, and Vlatković does not hide his enthusiasm.
The credit for the impressive collective performance of the regions in the competition belongs to the young Duvnjak, who grows 1,200 olive trees and is a member of the sensory commission for the evaluation of olive oil Olea Šibenik. When he sent his two oils to NYIOOC last year and won gold and silver with the stamp of St. John of Vodice, he felt both pride and sadness at the same time because only 12 samples from Dalmatia were presented at the event. When he saw that Dalmatia was not on the map of olive regions, he said that he could not come to his senses.
Duvnjak is starting to think about organizing local olive growers who will perform together in this competition and help in branding their oils, which Istrian producers have been doing for years. If he had to, he would go and collect oils from house to house, Duvnjak thought to himself. He first proposed his idea of organizing local producers to join NYIOOC to Goran Pauk, the prefect of Šibenik-Knin County. Spider accepted the idea and a meeting took place in Duvnjak’s oil mill.
They were joined by Duvnjak’s father, fellow producer Damir Buntić, acting President of the Šibenik County Chamber of Commerce Josip Laća and Višnja Marasović, County Head of Agriculture and Rural Development of Šibenik-Knin County. Together, they decided to monitor the results of several local competitions in olive oil and conduct sensory analyzes of the winners to ensure they are of top quality. They then invited the best olive oils from these competitions to enter the 2021 NYIOOC.
In the meantime, Pauk started inviting other Dalmatian counties to join Šibenik-Knin and look for their highest quality olive oils. Soon, olive growers in all four counties – Zadar, Šibenik, Split and Dubrovnik – began to get excited. Duvnjak reviewed which Dalmatians had gone to previous editions of the NYIOOC, contacting them all, along with others he knew had excellent oils. “I called them in person and when I explained everything to them, everyone was incredibly happy and everyone supported it ,” he said.
At first, Duvnjak thought that maybe 20 or 30 oils would be collected, but in the end, 51 oils were sent to New York from Solta, Hvar, Brac, Korcula, Dubrovnik, Zadar and Sibenik. “Certainly, there are more extraordinary olive oils in Dalmatia, but we haven’t reached all of them,” said Duvnjak. “We may not know about some of them yet, but the first year about 50 samples are excellent,” The first step in sending all of these olive oils to New York was to register all competitors by Dec. 30 to take advantage of the reduced rate during the early registration period. Duvnjak’s wife Helena played an important role in this part of the process. She is a law graduate and is fluent in English, which allows her to take the necessary steps on behalf of the producers. The second step was for all registered competitors to bring samples to the Sveti Ivan oil mill and send them all to the competition. Duvnjak and his cast began raising funds to pay for shipping costs and registration fees. In the end, Šibenik-Knin County and other counties agreed to pay 50 percent of the registration fee for each olive grower, and the Šibenik Chamber of Commerce agreed to pay 25 percent.
The costs of shipping the samples were borne by the Sveti Ivan oil mill. “It is a fortunate circumstance that we have a contract with DHL, so the costs are much lower,” Duvnjak said. However, this was only the first step of what Duvnjak sees as an ongoing process. The ultimate goal is for Dalmatian producers to emulate the success of their Istrian counterparts. “We can still learn a lot from olive oil producers in Istria; they know how to do business, ”he said. Over the years, Istrian producers have successfully organized themselves into local producer organizations, which support and educate members and help in the market of their products. Duvnjak believes that this is one of the reasons why they have become so successful over the years and why Istria has twice been declared the best olive growing region in the world.
He is convinced that Dalmatia can follow in the same footsteps. “If olive oil producers continue to take the rules of the profession even more seriously in growing, harvesting and processing, and then in maintaining the oil in optimal conditions, most of them will get gold in New York ,” Duvnjak said. “The ultimate goal is to bring Dalmatia to the level of the best olive growing region in the world, and then, together with our Istria, to make Croatia a brand,” he added. Duvnjak believes that everyone who visits Croatia should know about the high-quality extra virgin olive oils in the country. His effort to promote Dalmatian producers is the first step on a long road to promoting the region and boosting the world’s top olive oil production. “This success, which will soon be celebrated by all participants, is the beginning of the historical unification of olive oil in Dalmatia”, he said. “There will be a party, where else but in the oil mill of St. Ivan in Vodice, where it all started.” Duvnjak believes that this is one of the reasons why they have become so successful over the years and why Istria has twice been declared the best olive growing region in the world. He is convinced that Dalmatia can follow in the same footsteps. “If olive oil producers continue to take the rules of the profession in cultivation, harvesting and processing even more seriously, and then in maintaining the oil in optimal conditions, most of them will get gold in New York.”, said Duvnjak. “The ultimate goal is to bring Dalmatia to the level of the best olive growing region in the world, and then, together with our Istria, to make Croatia a brand,” he added.
*Source: https://www.oliveoiltimes.com/hr/world/dalmatia-olive-oils-world-stage/93597