Johnny Madge, a native of the U.K. has been living in Italy for over 39 years where he originally traveled to Rome to study sculpture and fine arts.
Johnny started tasting olive oil on the panel of the Slow Food Guide “Extravergini” in 2005. Since then he has talked about olive oil for many radio and television programs of the BBC and elsewhere, such as in New York at the 1st NYOOC in 2013 where he analyzed the concept of bitterness in olive oil.
In 2008 he initiated the “Johnny Madge Olive Oil Tour” a multilevel program on olive oil education for tourists, chefs and producers from all over the world. In the words of Tom Mueller, author of the famous book “ExtraVirginity”, Johnny’s tours are “legendary”, and have garnered excellent reviews from TripAdvisor.
Since 2014 he has judged olive oil in international competitions such as Olive Japan, the Australian International Olive Awards, London Olive Oil Competition, Berlin Global and Athena.
In 2017 he was awarded the Lekythos award at the Ercole Olivario Competition for the non-Italian person who distinguished himself by spreading the good word of quality Italian olive oil in Italy and abroad.
Since the advent of Covid he has started holding online olive oil tastings. These have been greeted with great enthusiasm. Here are some reviews:
“Still, your tasting remains the lockdown highlight over the past 14 months.” Leslie G.
(from TripAdvisor)
“Fantastic virtual fun during quarantine: learning lots and tasting delicious olive oil…….”
“ In the short time of an hour and a half I learned more about olive oil than ever before. He explained tasting techniques, the background of our tester oils, the complete process of creating good oil, how defects happen, what to look for to find good oil, how to shop for oil, and all about the culture of olive oil producing. We were both completely enthralled -- let alone having a blast at the pleasant atmosphere of the group that day……..” “It was a wonderful experience, the price was fair, and I would recommend this to anyone. It's also a perfect lockdown activity……….”
We are truly blessed to have partnered with Johnny, using his knowledge and relationships with the finest Producers in Italy and his exquisite sense of taste to select our oils which we import to the U.S.. Johnny Madge makes our company stand apart from everyone else in the industry and we are quite lucky to have him with us!
