Judges

The store was founded by my late father, Dr. Steven Brabeck, in 2012 as one of the first specialty food shops in Carmel Valley Village. As a cardiologist he educated his customers about olive oil health benefits and how to incorporate it into their daily diets. I joined him in 2016 and was certified as an olive oil taster in 2019. The Quail & Olive offers the freshest California extra virgin olive oils as well as locally sourced vinegars, kitchen accoutrements, cookbooks, gift selections, skin care and more.

Steven Rosenberg is the Founder and "Good Food Evangelist" at Liberty Heights Fresh. A good food market established in Salt Lake City in 1993. Steven has been a fruit and vegetable grower, fresh flower peddler, and filmmaker, and has been a champion of early harvested and carefully milled and extra virgin olive oil for more than 25 years.

Lucas Britton is the Head Buyer at Monsieur Marcel Gourmet Market in Los Angeles. An avid home cook and lifelong food enthusiast, his role at the French family-owned LA gourmet destination includes curating their EVOO offerings, with a wide variety of international origins and a commitment to providing their customers with the best current harvest oils available.

Nigel works in sales for Rogers Collection, a specialty food importer focused on working with artisan producers committed to tradition and quality.  Nigel has six years of experience with Rogers tasting extra virgin olive oils, and his team currently imports and evaluates oils from eight different countries.  Outside of work, Nigel enjoys hiking, camping, snowboarding, and sea kayaking with his wife and son.

Nancy Ash will be our Olive Oil Competition Leader paneling the olive oils and coordinating the results with the trade buyer judges. 

Nancy grew up in a household that cooked with olive oil, but her journey as an expert began with training from California Olive Oil Council in 1997. In 2005 Nancy received certification as a Taste Panel Supervisor from the Organizzazione Nazoinale Assaggiatori Olio di Oliva in Italy. She was a Taste Panel Leader for the California Olive Oil Council’s Taste Panel, and was the 2011 recipient of the C.O.O.C. Pioneer Award in recognition of her work in olive oil education.

As President of Strictly Olive Oil LLC, Nancy consults with domestic and foreign producers and importers, and also teaches sensory assessment to trade and consumer groups. She enjoys judging olive oil competitions and has served as Head Judge for several organizations.

My work life and personal interests are all centered around food. At work I focus on food sourcing, catering, and accounting.  I often travel to visit producers to learn about production and to select products that we use and sell at ZIngerman’s.  I enjoy food in all its forms- planting, harvesting, seed saving, preserving and cooking -- all inspire and delight me.

Lori Jean Levy is the Founder of My Global Table. She is an importer and distributor of Extra Virgin Olive Oil with a focus on small producers, sustainability, and education.

Through My Global Table, Lori has created a portfolio of outstanding and noteworthy brands and has developed custom olive oil programs for many well renowned US retailers. Lori spent five years at New York’s beloved Fairway Market as Director of Private Label and Trade overseeing a vast portfolio for 15 stores.

Lori has been a featured speaker on multiple olive oil panels and is a champion and advocate for women in the industry.  She serves on the board of Slow Food Atlanta, and is a dual member of Les Dames d’Escoffier (New York and Atlanta chapters).

As a former nurse, I became interested in the health benefits of extra virgin olive oil, in part due to some family health issues.  City Olive opened in Chicago in March 2007. It has been a rewarding journey as we have met and hosted so many dedicated, passionate producers and have also traveled to visit them. At City Olive, we carry an exquisite selection of the finest estate bottled extra virgin olive oils, locally made artisan products and responsibly sourced specialty foods like Olives, Vinegars, Spices, Pastas and Mustards from around the world.

My wife and I own Yaranush Mediterranean Foods, a small store offering gourmet specialities from the Mediterranean and Middle East located in White Plains, NY. We specialize in Greek products with a focus on extra virgin olive oils. I’m an olive oil enthusiast and use it both medicinally and gastronomically. 

Lila is the general manager and buyer at Foster Sundry, a whole animal butcher, cheese counter and cafe in Brooklyn. Lila has worked as a purchaser in specialty food for over a decade at retailers, restaurants, and as a judge at the Cheesemonger Invitational.

For Lila, specialty olive oil has always been a rich and interesting category. Much like wine, it has been particularly exciting to watch this storied ingredient be challenged and changed by a new generation of young producers.

In their spare time Lila enjoys toying with their fixed gear bicycle, making ice cream, and searching for the best frozen dumplings in New York.

Joanne Lacina’s passion for olive oil was born while living on the Greek island of Crete where she couldn’t get enough of the delicious local olive oil produced by the island’s majestic centennial olive trees. After delving further into the world of olive oil, in 2008 she transferred that love back to the USA and launched Olive Oil Lovers, an ecommerce website dedicated to bringing the world’s top quality olive oils directly to consumers’ households and businesses. Joanne continued to deepen her olive oil education and tasting skills in 2011 at the Organizzazione Nazionale Assaggiatori Olio Di Oliva in Liguria, and in the summer of 2017, became the first female and 3^rd Member of the Savantes Register with the Extra Virgin Olive Oil Savantes.

My passion for olive oil began while working for Zingerman's Deli in the early 1990s. For the past 30 years, I have been working at Provisions International (a specialty food distributor). We have the pleasure of selling many fine olive oils from various regions of the world. I have also been fortunate enough to visit various olives groves throughout Europe. 

Kate is an internationally recognized authority on cheese with 30 years of experience in the farmhouse cheese industry. Her work encompasses cheese-mongering and marketing, affinage, publishing, teaching, and presenting. She also acts as a consultant to cheese producers and retailers. She has worked with producers and retailers around the world, starting in London at Neal’s Yard and working in places as diverse as California, Uganda, Ecuador, the Netherlands and Macedonia. 

A former member of the Board of Directors for the American Cheese Society (ACS), and Chair of the ACS’s Regulatory and Academic Committee, Kate judges at many U.S. and international competitions.  In 2011, she was inducted into the Guilde Internationale des Fromagers, where she was especially recognized for her work within the artisanal cheese industry, both in the U.S and overseas.

In 2014, together with Mona Talbott, Kate founded and continues to operate the award winning Talbott & Arding Cheese and Provisions, a specialty cheese and prepared foods store in the city of Hudson, NY.