The
olive has its day in the sun
In California wine country, olive oil may be the new
Chardonnay. Producers are offering tours and tastings.
By
Leslie Gornstein, Special to The Times
December 4, 2005
Squished together like
grapes in a harvesting crate, the weekend wine-tasters
are crawling along clogged California 29 through the
Napa Valley. The olive trees lining the road whisper
of the Other Napa, but the Chardonnay sippers don't
know to listen.
It's olive pressing season, time to taste a different
type of vintage — the extra virgin kind. Across
California, frantoios (that's Italian and insider lingo
for an olive press) are coaxing liquid gold out of midnight-colored
fruit. A few oil producers also are offering tastings
and a crash course in the good life, Mediterranean-style.
The state has more than
6,100 acres devoted to olives, squeezing out a combined
750,000 gallons a year, about the same as France produces.
Most of it comes from Butte and Tulare counties, but
the industry is just starting to tap into tourism, so
the best place for beginners is the visitor-friendly
Napa and Sonoma valleys.
Even here, however, fewer than 20 producers are prepared
to accommodate the public, and some only through private
tours. But each grower is a study in passion.
"Nobody's getting rich on olive oil, because you
might get 1 gallon harvesting an entire tree,"
says Carol Ainsworth, owner of Great Olive Tours in
St. Helena. "Sometimes it's even less than that.
It's not an industry paying for itself right now. People
are lucky to break even."
California's olive oil
industry is in its infancy, most experts agree —
about the same place as its wine producers were 30 years
ago. Foodies, too, are just getting hip to oil and how
to mull "tasting notes" of artichoke or mature
grass. That means no guidebooks and no tourist maps
of olive oil tasting rooms. You need a guide like Ainsworth
or a telephone and some patience. But — as I found
out during a September trip to Napa — it can be
worth the effort.
Before the Spanish first brought those silvery, quintessentially
Mediterranean trees to Catholic missions in California,
America was the farthest thing from olive country. Thomas
Jefferson tried cultivating a few trees at Monticello,
but they failed in Virginia's winters. The padres had
more success and seeded the missions from San Diego
to Sonoma, starting in 1789. Many still have Mission
variety olive trees on their grounds, as well as remnants
of the mills they used to press oil.
By the late 1800s, the Golden State had 2,000 acres
planted in olives. Over the decades, California has
ripened into the nation's olive capital — more
than 90% are grown here — but the gourmands still
turned to Europe for their oil. It wasn't until the
1990s that California olive oil started to climb in
prestige.
Some growers credit
Lila Jaeger, a partner in the Rutherford Hill Winery,
for the shift. She discovered an olive grove on her
property in the early 1990s and pruned the century-old
overgrowth into a productive orchard. About the same
time, Nan Tucker McEvoy, part-owner of Chronicle Publishing,
planted Tuscan varieties on 80 acres of her Petaluma
ranch. Word spread that California might have something
more to offer than just a nice Cabernet.
Ten harvests later, the
McEvoy Ranch charges $20 a head for its two-hour tasting
tours. They're offered only 12 or so times a year, and
they sell out weeks in advance.
But compared
with vintners, olive growers in general haven't fully
mastered the science of accommodating dilettantes. "I
would say only 10% or 15% of our members have tasting
rooms," says Patricia Darragh, executive director
of the California Olive Oil Council.
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"You've got to pick an olive or two..." |
Sonoma County's olive
festival started in 2001 and has grown into a three-month
celebration. This year's events began Saturday with
the Blessing of the Olives ceremony at the Mission
San Francisco Solano de Sonoma and continue with group
olive harvests, tastings, seminars on curing and hikes
overlooking the orchards.
A few miles
north at the Olive Press, a communal frantoio in Glen
Ellen, self-guided tours go on year-round —
not just in the fall, when growers bring in their
harvest for crushing. (Contd on next panel...)
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Visitors can gape at the
press and even sample olive oils for free at a tasting
bar. "The press is going 18 to 24 hours a day during
the pressing season, from October through December and
sometimes into January," Darragh says.
In Napa County, Round Pond lies off a peaceful two-lane
street in Rutherford. It's one of the few producers in
the area to have its own orchards and press. The estate,
founded 20 years ago by the MacDonnell family, produces
five types of olive oil.
For $20 per person,
Round Pond offers visitors a generous, genteel atmosphere.
The curious can touch the trees and fruit as well as learn
the hallmarks of proper pruning (a canopy-shaped tree).
There are no designated tour guides; instead, every staffer
seems to have an encyclopedic knowledge. Before visitors
arrive at the looming granite-and-metal press, they learn
a bushel. It can take five years to get a decent crop
from a young olive tree. Olives should be pressed within
an hour of picking to avoid any flavor-killing fermentation.
"And you get about five times as much juice from
a grape as you do oil from an olive," Rhonda Spencer,
Round Pond's finance administrator, said during a recent
tour. "This is a labor of love. People tell us they
had no idea there was this much to it."
At the end of the
tour, visitors gather around a wooden table laden with
greens, fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, apples and wedges
of French loaf. Guides pour the oils into squat, cobalt-blue
tasting glasses and encourage guests to roll them over
the tongue and palate. Round Pond also makes vinegars,
sampled by dribbling onto sugar cubes.
Other growers require a private guide, such as Great Olive
Tours' Ainsworth. Poplar Hill, run by William and Rachel
Casey, is one such exclusive producer. But those on one
of Ainsworth's $65-an-hour tours get the royal treatment
at the St. Helena estate. Rachel Casey feeds her guests
a cake baked with her own olive oil. The Caseys also take
pride in Poplar Hill's organic production: Carnivorous
plants live among the branches, and guinea fowl roam the
grounds, snacking on pests.
|
Olive oil tastings are conducted
in the Italian-style Villa Mille Rose in Oakville,
Calif., which also offers tours of the music - filled
gardens.
(Leslie Gornstein) |
Villa Mille Rose (House
of a Thousand Roses), in the Napa valley town of Oakville,
is another of Ainsworth's stops. Here, Italian socialite
Maria Manetti Farrow rules over an earthly paradise filled
with grape vines, bonsai trees and gardens that seem to
sing, thanks to the opera that Farrow pipes through outdoor
speakers whenever she's in town. As Farrow's white poodle
Gioia trots at her feet, the olive oil maker leads visitors
around her grounds and even, when the season permits,
sends them home with crates of surplus produce.
Farrow also leads
olive oil tastings in the middle of the kitchen of her
vast, Italian villa-style home. Even luckier visitors
might get a gander at her home-barreled balsamic vinegars,
which, like her oils, tend to sell out.
"I like to bring visitors joy and happiness,"
Farrow says, her voice all throaty generosity. "It's
what life is about." That, and a good bottle of oil,
to go.
WHERE
TO TASTE:
The McEvoy Ranch
5935 Red Hill Road
Petaluma
Tel: (866) 617-6779
Visit Website
E-mail
Reservations
Two two-hour tasting
tours begin again in spring 2006. $20 per person,
maximum of eight per tour. Tours sell out weeks
in advance.
The Olive Press
14301 Arnold Drive
Glen Ellen
Tel: (800) 965-4839
Visit
Website
Open 10 a.m. to
5 p.m. daily. Visitors can see the press, a
video and try the complementary tasting bar.
Groups of 10 or more can book private tours
for $5 a person.
Round Pond
886 Rutherford Road
(California 128)
Rutherford
Tel: (877) 963-9364
Visit
Website
Tours and tastings
by appointment only, limit of 12 per group.
$20 per person.
Great Olive Tours
handles visits to Poplar Hill in St. Helena,
Villa Mille Rose in Oakville and others.
Tours can be arranged by calling (707)
968-9978 or Visit
Website
TO
LEARN MORE:
The California Olive Oil Council
P.O. Box 7520
Berkeley
CA 94707
Tel: (888) 718-9830
Visit
Website
The council keeps
information on olives, olive oil and tours (under
"Resources").
The Olive Oil Source
390 Vista Grande
Greenbrae
CA 94904
Tel: (415) 461-6267
Visit
Website
This is an information
and supply clearinghouse for oil producers,
consumers and hobbyists. Look under "Map
and Tours" for orchards that offer tours.
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