Professional Taster since 2024

Stig has been Senior Brand Manager at Haugen-Gruppen AS, the largest food import company in Norway.

He has worked in the food sector for more than 25 years, in companies such as Nestlé, Mars, and Haugen-Gruppen AS. He started working with olive oil in 2000 when he joined Haugen-Gruppen as a Key Account Manager. He sold olive oil to the main retail chains in Norway. For 15 years he has been a brand manager in the retail sector.

For 3 years he has been a brand manager in the food service sector. In 2015, he took a technical course for olive oil tasters and started training to become a professional taster. He has participated in international meetings for “ONAOO tasters” since 2017.

He has taken part in many olive harvests and presses in Spain, Italy and Greece in the last 12 years to get to know the different “cultures” of olive oil production (from small producers to large ones) and to understand the differences. He has been teaching Norwegians about olive oil by tasting it with managers of big companies, shop managers, journalists, salespeople, and others. He now runs his own company, Lukt, Smak og Nyt (Smell, Taste and Enjoy), teaching consumers how to select and use extra virgin olive oil.

Edoardo was born in Imperia in 1994; he graduated in Business Administration in Genoa and he furthered his studies with a full time master’s degree in “Sales and Retail Management” in the “24 Ore Business School” in Milan. Since 2020 he has been living and working in Imperia and its rear valleys. The family business of the same name is based here, which produces and trades typical Ligurian and other products. He has been started his path as an olive oil taster in 2020, since 2021 he has been registered in the National Register of Technicians and Experts. In 2023 he obtained the qualification of Professional Taster of ONAOO.

Demetris Taliotis is the Chief Olive Oil Obsessive at Aparthenasa, an award-winning agrocraft estate focusing on the production of terroir-driven extra virgin olive oil from Cyprus. He is a graduate of the prestigious Expert Course in Virgin Olive Oil Tasting of the University of Jaén and a jury member to numerous international olive oil competitions. His varied involvement with olive oil spans a multifarious career in agri-food and FMCG marketing, location and countryside management, and expansive research interests at the cross-sections of transversal agriculture, disruptive innovation, organoleptic variability and the cultural and creative industries.

Demetris firmly believes in the de-commodification of micro-produced olive oil, through the exploration and promotion of the variety and variability of its organoleptic profiles, in a way that enhances the sensorial pleasures consumers can relish from Extra Virgin Olive Oil.