Stancija St. Antonio doo has again been proclaimed Croatia’s most awarded olive farm in the EVOO World Ranking for 2021.

To mark the occasion, Stancija St. Antonio presented the San Antonio Cocktail, one of the ingredients of which is its extra virgin olive oil, created especially for this occasion.

The San Antonio Oil Mill in Vodnjan, Istria, produces the highest ranked oils, and it was only last year that they were crowned with numerous international awards.

(Photo: Stancija St. Antonio)

Their extra virgin olive oil flavored cocktail is a step up to something completely different. They had the idea by chance when the director of the San Antonio oil mill, Marijan Marjanovic, and professional bartender Davor Kaic met during a course for olive oil sommeliers in Vodnjan.

Davor Kaić has been working in the tourism sector as a professional bartender for 20 years. He graduated from the leading bartending school “EBS ROMA” in Rome and started his career at the Esplanade Hotel in Zagreb. He then continued his career at the Hotel San Canzian, not far from Buje. It was there that he fell in love with Istria and decided to stay and take advantage of the opportunities that Istria offers. Davor continued his career at the Hotel Monte Mulini in Rovinj, where he currently works.

Davor Kaić (Photo: Stancija St. Antonio)

He decided to try something new and signed up for a course for olive oil sommeliers in Vodnjan, where he met the manager of the successful oil mill in San Antonio.

“As we both took the course, we were united by a love of olive oil! This love encouraged us to be creative with each other and improve our own experiences. We wanted to combine the olive oil in a different story, in a more special way, and the result is the idea by which we created this special cocktail. Thoughts went in the direction of making the olive oil-based cocktail. olive, without losing the taste and smell of olive oil,” Davor Kaić told us.

(Photo: Stancija St. Antonio)

The cocktail is basically made up of simple ingredients, while the manufacturing and preparation process is quite complex and demanding. The cocktail used Leccino olive oil, which tastes extremely fresh and aromatic. It smells of olives and cut grass, it’s moderately bitter and spicy, and the oil itself gives a nice character to the cocktail, which was named San Antonio in keeping with the occasion.

(Photo: Stancija St. Antonio)

We toasted this cocktail to Pula at Dvojka Caffe Bar and had the opportunity to be the first to taste it and ask Marjanović, which are the best?

“We are the best because we have won the most points in the foreign competitions participating in the EVOOWR. We won 27 awards in five different contests, totaling 765.25 points. The oil with the most points, ISTARSKA BJELICA, is also ours, of which we are extremely proud,” said Marijan Marjanović, director of this successful oil mill.

Marijan Marjanović (Photo: Stancija St. Antonio)

This ranking is part of the World Ranking of the World Association of Journalists and Writers. The Global EVOO Ranking is a non-profit scale created to promote the world’s most awarded EVOO to consumers. It rewards oils that have participated worldwide in any competition held in 2021 that it considers international. A list of the classified is published each year.

(Photo: Stancija St. Antonio)

(Photo: Stancija St. Antonio)

“Our continuous work and improvement, state-of-the-art technology and personalized approach to each olive grower has yielded particularly high results this year. And as 2021 drew to a close and we thought everything was done and nothing would surprise us anymore, another in a series of super positive things happened thanks to uninterrupted work,” concluded Marjanović.