Each year, around this time, the heart of international gastronomy beats in London, at the international culinary competition “Great Taste Awards” which awards the best and the highest quality products in the world, while being a reference point for gourmet food and has been characterized as the “Oscars of Taste”.
The awards with the 1, 2 and 3 gold stars at the Great Taste Awards are equivalent to the Michelin stars of awarded restaurants (“Great Taste is to specialty food and drink what Michelin is to fine dining”).
The internationally famed taste competition Great taste Awards is organized by the Guild of Fine Food since 1994, and is the world’s largest, longest standing and most respected food accreditation scheme for artisan and specialty food and drink producers.
The Great Taste Awards are internationally renowned for their objectivity and validity, since they relate exclusively to the product’s taste, without reference to the packaging, brand or logo, while it does not judge the marketing, but only the taste and quality of the product.
Indicative of the recognition of the awards is that the establishment is supported by the word-renowned Harrods of London as well as the well-known department store Fortnum & Mason, along with other gourmet food department stores and large food companies worldwide.
This year, more than 500 expert panel tasters, which consisted of expert food critics, chefs, restaurant owners, producers, cookbook authors, and many culinary journalists, rated the products through the blind tasting procedure, in which they tasted, consulted and re-tasted, in order to decide which products are worthy to be awarded.
For 120 days, from March until the end of June, more than 14,000 high quality products were tasted with the blind tasting procedure, from 87 countries worldwide, in order to present the awards, gold stars, which offer every product awarded international recognition.
The incredibly high rate of difficulty for a product to be awarded in this competition was confirmed in 2024, since only about 250 products were awarded with the highest award of 3 gold stars from the total of +14,000 products which participated in the competition, corresponding to a rate of 1.50% approximately. As always, a rate of less than 10% of the participating products was awarded with 2 gold stars, which also constitutes a very high distinction.
Sakellaropoulos Organic Farms, who have been awarded in the past with a total of 37 Gold Star awards in the competition, participated one more time with their innovative olive products, and were honored with 3 very high but also unique Gold Star awards, thus completing the unique number of 40 Great Taste Awards in total.
In detail, the awards for 2024 are:
Organic Kalamata Olives – 3 Gold Stars
ARMONIA Monovarietal Organic – 2 Gold Stars
OLEOASTRON Gourmet Evoo – 1 Gold Star
It is worth noting that the Organic Kalamata Olives by Sakellaropoulos Organic Farms are the only olives awarded with 3 Gold Stars for 2024, in the entire category of olives from all countries, while at the same time they are already in the finals, where after a new re-evaluation by the judges, they will be candidates for the OVERALL awards with the title “GOLDEN FORKS”, which will be announced in September 2024.
The announcement of the results from this renowned competition, justifies the efforts of Sakellaropoulos Organic Farms to create unique taste combinations for their olive products, while it is now evident that they belong to the international elite of gourmet foods.
These three specific Gold Star awards at the Great Taste Awards in London, result in the unique record of 996 international awards for Sakellaropoulos Organic Farms, from renowned international competitions of high prestige worldwide, indicating an international record of awards for an olive producer, who cultivates, produces and packages exclusively his own olive products (Single Estate Organic producer).
