California Olive Oil
News^©
A Publication of The Olive Oil Source  

Volume 5 Issue 10

October  2002

Cañada College Arts and Olive Festival

A moderate sized but educated crowd of olive and olive oil enthusiasts attended this year’s arts and olive festival on the Cañada College campus south of San Francisco.  Last year the shock of  9/11 the week before discouraged attendance.  This year beautiful weather enticed attendees to the olive tree studded campus for olive oil tasting and to view olive oriented arts and crafts. 

Vendors reported several changes, additions and improvements to their product line.  Sharon Cohn has tackled the job of resurrecting her B.R. Cohn label now that it has been repurchased from the failed Kalm Group.  Her nicely decorated booth was graced with a ribbon from the Sept 2002 AmericasMart Atlanta trade show where her estate oil won the award for “Best Healthy or Low Fat Food Entry”.  Pretty amazing for an entry that’s all fat.  The estate oil is pressed from Picholine olives.  Although commonly planted 100 years ago, oils containing this variety are rare in California.

Merritt Edmunds of Balzana Olive Oil, one of the few oil vendors following strict health code measures, parceled out bread cubes to tasters with sanitary tongs.  Balzana olives are crushed by stone wheels by Allessio Carli at Pietra Santa in Hollister.

The Olive Grove Nursery/Tree Movers sold 1 and 2 year old trees to festival goers. Some of the Arbequina trees less than 2 years old had heavy fruit. Owners Patricia and Wendell Davis had some great pictures of 40 foot trees being hoisted out of the ground for transplantation.  Wendell recently moved a 20 foot tree for entrance landscaping at the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show.  Flower show chairman Duane Kelly judged it the best entrance to the show in 15 years.

Ray Lopez offered tastes of his Bonita Ranch oil from the foothills.  He and others reported that over 7 days of greater than 100 degree heat in that area has stopped the olive fly in its tracks.  He has an oil made from the interesting combination of Mission, Manzanillo and Nevadillo Blanco olives.  Hare Hollow was premiering their Eureka lemon olive oil infused with herbs of Provence. The lemons are crushed with late harvest mission olives then infused with the dry herbs.

Olivas de Oro owner Frank Manacho gave tastes of his unfiltered organic Mission Manzanillo blend.  We saw quite a few people leaving the festival with his distinctive cobalt blue bottle. Big Paw Grub had several interesting new infusions and a new high priced but well balanced premium oil.   Aeolia had olives and olive oil for tasting. Armstrong olives had the biggest selection of cured olives at the show.  This year the Armstrongs have given the show over to their distributor.  Bistro Blend by Spenger Foods and Brando’s both were offering imported oils. 

Many new olive ranchers came by the Olive Oil Source booth to look at olive pruning, harvesting and milling equipment.  Jim Sinuna and Jeane Struck have just planted their first 500 Koroneiki and Arbequina trees near Healdsburg with the help of Jeff Allen at Allen Landscaping.  Many others told of their recent purchase or desire to purchase land for olives in the coastal valleys or Sierra foothills. Philip Monego was looking for more information after recently purchasing 40 acres near Paso Robles, Ca.  He has several acres already planted with Sevillano olives and will be planting more oil varieties. Several eager backyard olive oil makers took a First Press^TM  olive oil press home. Cañada College grounds keeping staff spray the olive trees on campus to prevent fruit so demonstrations of the pneumatic harvester were difficult.  Lisa Deane related that an operator with a hand held pneumatic harvester can remove 300 lbs of olives an hour.  Typically a three man crew can do the job of 10-20 people on ladders hand picking.

Nina Keene with the Mission Olive Project explained their goal of restoring the olive groves at each California mission.  Trees propagated from original mission stock by Santa Cruz Olive Tree Nursery were for sale as well as Penna olives, Sciabica olive oil, and other fund raising items.  Local volunteers are planning events at Soledad Mission and Santa Cruz Mission to support the orchard efforts; see the Events listing.

The next olive oriented festival will be the 2nd annual Mission San Jose Chamber of Commerce Olive Festival October 26, 2002 on Dominican Sisters grounds behind the Old Mission San Jose Museum.  Address is 43325 Mission Blvd., in the Mission San Jose District in Fremont. Contact Connie Andrade at 510-873-7701 for exhibitor information.

Green Olive Recipe

Gene Lawler, who has given olive curing classes at the Canada College Olive Festival for several years, has shared his recipe for green olives. One of the joys of an olive festival is hearing everyone's  family recipe for curing olives. Although they may disagree on additives and cure times, all agree that home made olives beat the store bought article by a mile.

GREEN OLIVE RECIPE

Use two 5 gallon buckets with 11 lbs. olives in each bucket.
Wash and sort green olives. Do not dry.

DAY #1 For each bucket put 2 gals. cold water plus 8 tbls lye. Dissolve lye in water. Let stand ½ hour, then add olives. Place weight on top of olives. Let stand 24 hours.

DAY #2 Drain olives, wash well. In bucket put 2 gal. water, plus 4 tbls. lye for each bucket. Add olives and let stand 48 hours.

DAY #4 Drain olives, wash well. In bucket put 2 gal. water, plus 4 tbls. canning salt (plain salt) for each bucket. Add olives and let stand 24 hours.

DAY #5 Drain olives, wash well. In bucket put 2 gal. water plus 18 tbls. salt for each bucket. (18 tbls. = 1 cup + 2 tbls.) Let stand 24 hours.

DAY # 6 Drain olives, wash well. In bucket put 2 gal. water plus 8 tbls. salt per bucket. Let stand 24 hours.

DAY #7 Drain olives, wash well. In bucket put 2 gal. water plus 10 tbls. salt. Leave for 24 hours.

DAY #8 Same as Day # 7. 10 tbls. salt

DAY #9 Drain olives, wash well. In each bucket put 2 gal. water plus ½ cup salt and 4 tbls. white vinegar. Let stand 3 to 4 days. Can stand one week before canning. Rinse olives before canning.

TO CAN Sterilize quart jars, heat lids. Pack olives into hot jars, add a clove of garlic to each jar. Boil one gal. water with ½ cup canning salt. Fill each filled jar of olives with this liquid. Leave ½ inch air space. Process in canner one hour, medium boil. i.e. Cover jars with water, and tighten lids tight before canning. Let cool out of draft. Do not tighten lids while jars are cooling.

NOTE: VINEGAR SHOULD BE AT LEAST 5% ACIDITY
16 tbls = 1 cup, 8 tbls = 1/2 , 4 tbls = ¼ cup

For more olive recipes see our recipes page

Tree Planting/Olive oil Appreciation Class in Santa Rosa

September 14, 2002 Dennis Black, Vice President of NovaVine Grapevine Nursery, directed a class on Planting Olive Trees and Olive Oil Appreciation at Santa Rosa Junior College. There were 27 attendees; current growers, people interested in planting their own orchard, those interested in sensory appreciation and those wanting to learn more about the Olive Oil industry.

The day started with a short history of the Olive tree, and the emerging role that California has played in the last 150 years.  Shari DeJoseph, Orchard Manager for McEvoy Ranch, outlined her experience.  She described orchard planning and how to maximum the propagation cycle to achieve their excellent McEvoy Ranch Olive Oil.  Shari was very generous with her time, answering many questions participants had about how to plant the perfect orchard.

Web sites were then discussed, to save the students time, and money, and speed up the learning curve. Other helpful advice was offered such as how to contact UC Extension experts like Paul Vossen and how to obtain the many UC publications that have been written.

Pairing food with different oils  was the next topic. Three very distinction Olive Oils were poured so the students could visualize the type of food that they might want to combine  with each oil.  Oils used were The California Olive Ranch, for the Arbequina Olive Oil, Brando’s Bella Italia for the Coratine Olive Oil, and McEvoy for the Tuscany blend.

Over 22 different types of Olive Oil’s were displayed and available to the students to taste, in bottles of all different shapes and sizes.  Olivas de Oro Estate Grown, and Storm Ranch Olive Oil were good enough to provide the class with hands outs explaining the care that goes into earning the California Olive Oil Council Extra Virgin seal.  Corti Brothers provided their newsletter, which gave the students a first hand look at writings of a profession critic.

Rick Jones, a representative of The Olive Press and a member of the COOC taste panel, gave a complete description of the milling process from fruit being delivered to the mill, to golden oil going into the bottle.  Because of its proximity to students in this area, several of the class had already utilized the services of the Olive Press and spoken with the General Manager, Deborah Rodgers.

One of the surprises of the day for the class was guest speakers Albert Katz, President of the COOC, and Roberto Zecca, past president of the COOC and current leader of the COOC taste panels.  Attendees were able to taste six California and Italian oils while hearing their rich history. The six olive oils were Castellare di Ugnana, DaVero EVO, DaVero Tuscan, Frantoio green label, Simone Santini, and Storm Ranch Olive Oil.

Roberto,  just returned from New Zealand where he was a guest Judge, provided a grading sheet which he had used down under.  The first go around, Roberto explain all parts of the grading sheet and then asked the class to describe their sensory experience, and how they would grade.  Albert Katz during this time gave background on the olive producers, how the oil was made, and the different experiences each producer had gone through to be where they were today.  Information was also given on the valuable services of the California Olive Oil Council.

For those interested in similar classes, watch the events listing in the newsletter and on the home page of The Olive Oil Source. Some upcoming events:

Strictly Olive Oil's Betty Pustarfi will be conducting an afternoon of olive oil tasting and information at Kathy and Alfred Herbermann's new olive grove in Carmel Valley. The event is scheduled for October 13, and will feature olive oils from around the world, including California.

Hidden Villa ranch offers olive curing and olive oil making seminars in the San Francisco Bay area. Look at www.hiddenvilla.org

UC Davis Extension presents Sensory Evaluation of Olive Oil, Fri.-Sat., March 7-8, 9 a.m.- 4:30 p.m., at UC Davis. Learn to recognize olive oil defects and make objective assessments of olive oil quality. Tastings of commercial olive oils from California and Europe are interspersed with lectures. $375 fee includes two lunches and all tastings. Call (800) 752-0881, email aginfo@unexmail.ucdavis.edu or visit us online at www.extension.ucdavis.edu/agriculture.