Olive oil champion: First harvest wins global accolade

Inverleigh farmer Jen Ma kept her entries to the Australian International Olive Awards a secret, until she realised she won best in class for her first harvest.

An olive farmer’s first harvest has proven fruitful, as first-generation producer Jen Ma has taken home an international trophy with a near-perfect score.

Clydebank Farm’s Jen Ma started farming at Inverleigh three years ago, and says her rejuvenation, restoration work and a “whole lot of pruning” has led to winning global accolades for her olive oil.

“It was a lot of blood, sweat and tears,” she said.

“I wasn’t expecting (it), it’s my first harvest and I’ve flown by the seat of my pants a bit, I’m new to all of it.”

She entered two of her extra virgin olive oil varieties, picual and leccino, in the Australian International Olive Awards.

Jen Ma with her olive oil. Picture: Zoe Phillips

She won two silver medals for her leccino, two gold medals for picual, and the overall champion, best in class, for picual with 91/100. The reserve champion was Cobram Estate for its classic extra virgin olive oil.

The judges said the oil had abundant aromas with tropical fruits, stone fruit and citrus blossoms, unravelling to a “flavour bomb”.

Jen said the previous owners had the farm for 20 years, with about 3000 trees in the olive grove. They previously made olive oil, table olives and beauty olives, but Jen wanted to start from scratch.

“They really looked after the growth and their work really led to what it is today,” she said.

“I thought I would start basic … I wanted to make each one separate and get to know the trees, what the varieties do and how they taste, what the olive oil quality was like.”

Jen said they had plenty of flowers on the trees this year, and hoped for a bumper harvest in 2025. She had single varieties she was yet to harvest, including French and Greek.

“Each of them are such a beautiful oil on their own, they have all different qualities and I want to keep pushing for a high-quality single varietal,” she said.