rox
Veteran Member
I have to admit i have been reading more than posting, primarily because it is the pruning season and my husband and i just work, work, work, eat dinner, fall asleep in front of the tv or laptop, wake up in the morning and repeat.
We have a couple more piles to burn, and i have a few more trees to prune, but 99% of the spring pruning work is done so I am taking a breather and posting.
The best news is, we received 4 letters in the mail from Der Feinschmeckr magazine that 4 out of 5 of our olive oils were selected as one of the Best Olive Oils in the World. WOW!
Last year we were blown away because we were the first French Producer to receive 2 gold medals, now this year FOUR. Since I had sent in 5 oils i was curious to know which 4 of the 5 won so i called the Food & Wine editor to ask.
Officially since we have the letters I can report that our A.O.C. d' Aix en provence (a blend of all of our oils) Aglandau, Bouteillan and Grossane Oils were all winners. Chatting up the editor a bit he hesitated, then finally told me, "Well roxanne when the magazine comes in May out you will find out, actually your A.O.C. was selected as THE BEST OLIVE OIL IN FRANCE!!!!!!!!!!!!! Woooo-Hooooo!!!!! sorry ya'll for the caps and bolding but i am so dang happy and proud.
This a blind competition, der einschmecker sampled right around 800 olive oils from every continent except antartica, they fly in and pay the expenses for judges from 5 different countries, this is really the Bigest and Best olive oil competition in the World. Nobody, and I mean NO PRODUCER, has ever won 4 Gold medals in one year. i have all the olive oil special issues of the magazine and nobody ever won FOUR. Just for this special olive oil issue they charge 10 Euros a copy. This is the largest by circulation Food & Wine magazine in europe, you can put a period on that.
There are 2 big competitions in France and we only entered the competition in Marseille which covers 90% of all olive oil produced in France. I am actually a judge in this competition but we don't judge any oils in catagories we are entered in. We did not enter in the Paris national competition simply because we did not have the money. It would have cost about 300 Euros and since this is our low year (one year you get a lot of olives the next year not that many) we for the first time ,skipped entering. we are watchig evry penny, or should I say centime, this year. We did nto win in Marseille but for some reason i did not expect to. I just had a feeling.
However i did bite the bullet and send in 4 oils to the Los Angeles County Fair which is the largest U.S. competition, that cost $400 in entry fees plus it cost 95 euros in postage so I have my fingers crossed for that one. we did win BEST IN SHOW for 2006 and 2007 International Light as well as Gold and Silver medals so i am hoping that for 2008 we will at least get a medal or two in LA.
We are tight on inventory right now, just hoping to eak it out in having enough product to the next harvest since this is our down year and we did some severe prunning which made our 2007 harvest (which we sell in 2008) very low. One of our better customer is Houston Country Club and we desinged and printed a special label for them. They were hot to have our new olive oil right after it was pressed last November. So okay we shipped them a pallet, they were rolling it out serving it in their main dining room and they just had to have it for the Christmas season. The waitstaff ask if yu want butter or olive oil for your bread and if you asked for olive oil, they pour mas des bories olive oil. I mean we shipped them a pretty big pallet and dogonnit tonight we got an e-mail, how soon can they get more, they are running out. This olive oil has a very unique flavor it is very fruity and i guess we got those members at houston CC hooked becasue they are running out. hee-hee! Now it will be hard for them to ever switch suppliers because people soon recognize the unique taste of our oil.
So ar we did not loose any of our US customers because of the dollar plunging, it makes our olive oil very expensive. I have my fingers crossed that this continues, not loosing custmers do to he high price. it is not like we are making any more money off the sales, we are priced in euros, it is not our fault and we cannot control the value of the dollar which makes our products from Europe very expensive. We get the same amount of euros it jsut takes ore dollars for our uScustomers to buy it.
Along this same vein I will bet the hole against the donut (as harv says) that there is goig to be even more aldulturation of olive oil that is shipped to the USA. What happens is bad people cut their olive ol with other cheaper oils in order to stretch it. With the bad position fo the dollar the european producers are pressured to reduce their Euro price. In order to bend to the price pressure I will bet the hole against the donut that there is massive dillution of olive oil. if there is a pressure on price they cut the Euro price but then cut the oil as well so that they come out the same. Honestly there are so many ways to cheat in this business and by far the majority of Americans have never tasted really premium olive oil, so you dont' know what it should taste like. I do have a mess of friends in texas who went to the eddie & Steph Walker hoe down who had a chance to try our olive oil. I still do feel bad that one of my favs on TBN, Bird missed that gathering and never got a chance to try it gratis.
i don't want to break the TBN rules about selling stuff on TBN so i won't post here where you can find Mas Des Bories olive oil in the USA. If you are interested please pm me and i'll let you know. it is sold by brick an mortor stores as well as over the internet.
Can you believe it, FOUR GOLD MEDALS And The BEST OIL IN FRANCE????? Can you believe it? I still remember moving here in 2004 and finding TBN and asking for help with driving our 2 tractors that came with the farm. I never thought I would be writing subsequently about winning olie oil competitions. In fact I neer eve knew, when i was jsut a newbie here that there even were olive oil competitions. My husband and i sure learned a lot in these last four years. Whenever we ahe somethign to celerate i always want to post and celebrate with my TBN friends. Don't we all share our joys and share our sorrows here?
We have a couple more piles to burn, and i have a few more trees to prune, but 99% of the spring pruning work is done so I am taking a breather and posting.
The best news is, we received 4 letters in the mail from Der Feinschmeckr magazine that 4 out of 5 of our olive oils were selected as one of the Best Olive Oils in the World. WOW!
Last year we were blown away because we were the first French Producer to receive 2 gold medals, now this year FOUR. Since I had sent in 5 oils i was curious to know which 4 of the 5 won so i called the Food & Wine editor to ask.
Officially since we have the letters I can report that our A.O.C. d' Aix en provence (a blend of all of our oils) Aglandau, Bouteillan and Grossane Oils were all winners. Chatting up the editor a bit he hesitated, then finally told me, "Well roxanne when the magazine comes in May out you will find out, actually your A.O.C. was selected as THE BEST OLIVE OIL IN FRANCE!!!!!!!!!!!!! Woooo-Hooooo!!!!! sorry ya'll for the caps and bolding but i am so dang happy and proud.
This a blind competition, der einschmecker sampled right around 800 olive oils from every continent except antartica, they fly in and pay the expenses for judges from 5 different countries, this is really the Bigest and Best olive oil competition in the World. Nobody, and I mean NO PRODUCER, has ever won 4 Gold medals in one year. i have all the olive oil special issues of the magazine and nobody ever won FOUR. Just for this special olive oil issue they charge 10 Euros a copy. This is the largest by circulation Food & Wine magazine in europe, you can put a period on that.
There are 2 big competitions in France and we only entered the competition in Marseille which covers 90% of all olive oil produced in France. I am actually a judge in this competition but we don't judge any oils in catagories we are entered in. We did not enter in the Paris national competition simply because we did not have the money. It would have cost about 300 Euros and since this is our low year (one year you get a lot of olives the next year not that many) we for the first time ,skipped entering. we are watchig evry penny, or should I say centime, this year. We did nto win in Marseille but for some reason i did not expect to. I just had a feeling.
However i did bite the bullet and send in 4 oils to the Los Angeles County Fair which is the largest U.S. competition, that cost $400 in entry fees plus it cost 95 euros in postage so I have my fingers crossed for that one. we did win BEST IN SHOW for 2006 and 2007 International Light as well as Gold and Silver medals so i am hoping that for 2008 we will at least get a medal or two in LA.
We are tight on inventory right now, just hoping to eak it out in having enough product to the next harvest since this is our down year and we did some severe prunning which made our 2007 harvest (which we sell in 2008) very low. One of our better customer is Houston Country Club and we desinged and printed a special label for them. They were hot to have our new olive oil right after it was pressed last November. So okay we shipped them a pallet, they were rolling it out serving it in their main dining room and they just had to have it for the Christmas season. The waitstaff ask if yu want butter or olive oil for your bread and if you asked for olive oil, they pour mas des bories olive oil. I mean we shipped them a pretty big pallet and dogonnit tonight we got an e-mail, how soon can they get more, they are running out. This olive oil has a very unique flavor it is very fruity and i guess we got those members at houston CC hooked becasue they are running out. hee-hee! Now it will be hard for them to ever switch suppliers because people soon recognize the unique taste of our oil.
So ar we did not loose any of our US customers because of the dollar plunging, it makes our olive oil very expensive. I have my fingers crossed that this continues, not loosing custmers do to he high price. it is not like we are making any more money off the sales, we are priced in euros, it is not our fault and we cannot control the value of the dollar which makes our products from Europe very expensive. We get the same amount of euros it jsut takes ore dollars for our uScustomers to buy it.
Along this same vein I will bet the hole against the donut (as harv says) that there is goig to be even more aldulturation of olive oil that is shipped to the USA. What happens is bad people cut their olive ol with other cheaper oils in order to stretch it. With the bad position fo the dollar the european producers are pressured to reduce their Euro price. In order to bend to the price pressure I will bet the hole against the donut that there is massive dillution of olive oil. if there is a pressure on price they cut the Euro price but then cut the oil as well so that they come out the same. Honestly there are so many ways to cheat in this business and by far the majority of Americans have never tasted really premium olive oil, so you dont' know what it should taste like. I do have a mess of friends in texas who went to the eddie & Steph Walker hoe down who had a chance to try our olive oil. I still do feel bad that one of my favs on TBN, Bird missed that gathering and never got a chance to try it gratis.
i don't want to break the TBN rules about selling stuff on TBN so i won't post here where you can find Mas Des Bories olive oil in the USA. If you are interested please pm me and i'll let you know. it is sold by brick an mortor stores as well as over the internet.
Can you believe it, FOUR GOLD MEDALS And The BEST OIL IN FRANCE????? Can you believe it? I still remember moving here in 2004 and finding TBN and asking for help with driving our 2 tractors that came with the farm. I never thought I would be writing subsequently about winning olie oil competitions. In fact I neer eve knew, when i was jsut a newbie here that there even were olive oil competitions. My husband and i sure learned a lot in these last four years. Whenever we ahe somethign to celerate i always want to post and celebrate with my TBN friends. Don't we all share our joys and share our sorrows here?
