What Olio Nuovo's Gold Medals Actually Mean

Award stickers on food packaging are everywhere, and it's entirely fair to be a little skeptical of them — plenty are self-awarded, regional-only, or judged with minimal rigour. So here's a straightforward, honest look at what Olio Nuovo's awards actually involved, and why they're worth paying attention to.

The awards

Olio Nuovo was awarded gold medals at two separate, independent competitions in 2025: the Royal Tasmanian Fine Food Awards and the Dubai Olive Oil Competition. Winning at two unrelated competitions, on two different continents, judged by entirely different panels working to different criteria, is a considerably stronger signal than a single win — it points to consistent quality rather than one panel's particular preference on one particular day.

How olive oil judging actually works

Olive oil competitions of this calibre typically combine two layers of assessment. First, chemical analysis — laboratory testing for markers like free acidity and peroxide value, which measure objective quality and freshness indicators rather than subjective taste. Second, blind sensory panels, where trained tasters assess the oil for fruitiness, bitterness, pepperiness, and the absence of any processing defects, without knowing the brand, producer, or price of what they're tasting.

Blind tasting matters a great deal here because it removes brand recognition, packaging, and price positioning from the equation entirely. The oil has to earn its score purely on what's in the glass — no story, no label design, no reputation to lean on.

Why this matters more for a smaller, single-estate producer

Large blended-oil brands can chase consistency by adjusting their blend composition from year to year, smoothing over any weaker harvest by leaning on stronger-performing sources elsewhere in their supply chain. A single-estate producer like Olio Nuovo doesn't have that option. Each harvest is entirely a product of that specific season's fruit, weather, and processing — there's no fallback blend to lean on if a particular batch underperforms.

Winning gold under those conditions, across two independent competitions in the same year, says as much about the underlying growing and processing approach at Bylands Estate as it does about any single bottle that happened to be entered. It suggests the quality is a genuine, repeatable characteristic of how the oil is made — not a one-off result from a particularly good batch.

What it means for you as a buyer

An award doesn't guarantee you'll personally love every single bottle — taste is subjective, and personal preference for more or less intense, bitter, or peppery oils varies widely. What it does mean is that the oil has been independently, blindly verified against genuine, technical quality benchmarks by people with no stake in the brand's success — not simply marketed as premium on the strength of packaging or price alone.

Taste the award-winning harvest — shop Olio Nuovo.