Several readers have asked for a list of olive oil competitions, events, fairs and festivals with relevant information for entering.

Taste competitions can be local, such as the county fair, or global such as the Mario Solinas Award given by the International Olive Oil Council.  Most US producers will want to enter several competitions, blue ribbons look good on your website and bottle and give you a pat on the back.  If your oil doesn't do well then there is work to do. 

The L.A. county fair is the one most food critics in the US are familiar with.  Winning the Sol Doro in Verona, Italy  isn't helpful if your customers have not heard of it.  Local events such as your County Fair are great for developing regional pride in your product.

Olive Oil Festivals are a perfect place to sell oil and get feedback from customers. See how your competitors are marketing their oil, swap information and make connections.  While the traffic at an olive oil festival may not be as high as at the Fourth of July fair,  the customers are pre-qualified and tend to be serious about the subject.  One day gross sales from a festival will probably be several times what a farmer's market brings in.  Producers have sold as much as $4,000 a day at the Canada College and Paso Robles events.  The Paso Robles Olive Oil Festival is now the largest in California, eschewing hula dancers and chiropractor booths for cooking demonstrations and other useful presentations.

National and international shows and events are a great way to see how the rest of the world is selling their oil.  The most accessible one in the US is the Winter Fancy Food show in San Francisco.  Many California producers attend this show and offer tastings of their products at their own booths.  The California Olive Oil Council has a booth where producers can rent space to pour olive oil for tasting.  Whole rows of producers from Italy, Spain, and Australia offer the big view of the market. We have seen some very clever ideas and products coming out of New Zealand and Australia at the show.

An international show such as SOL in Verona and Alimentaria are more expensive and difficult to attend, and do not offer much more in the way of tastings.  There is equipment on display but if there are not U.S. representatives, service personnel and spares then a purchase can be risky. The most common reason for attending these shows is to write off your foreign travel. 

See our new webpage for information about the above shows and festivals including scope, year started, deadlines, size and contact information.  Events and Festivals

The Olive Tree as Cinderella
An Ode to the Olive by Chip Ammerman

The olive tree has a long history here in Greece where I live. Athena, in her Name-the-City contest with Poseidon, gave an olive tree to the Athenians. Poseidon’s concept of the sea was runner-up—and the olive has been the symbol of Greece ever since.

I’ve never been as rhapsodic about trees, olive or otherwise. I know Joyce Kilmer wrote an ode about trees, which every kid had to learn when I was at school. But with regards to Mr Kilmer, I’m from the northeast of the United States where trees in literature or in life are viewed in a more utilitarian light: they act as a wind break, serve as fuel for drafty fireplaces, or provide torture for boys who need to rake leaves in the fall. Trees certainly do not play an important role in the ethos of the United States, Johnny Appleseed not withstanding.

Since coming to Greece, I realized olive trees were nice to have around. They provided a thick shade in summer, their leaves didn’t fall annually, and olive oil was good on salads. But the tree itself never assumed a mythical place in my psyche. When called upon to rationalize my coolness to the olive trees, I always cited the appearance of the tree. It’s not a tall or stately “whispering in the wind” tree. The usual olive tree is short and squat. Olive trees have gnarled trunks which twist and turn and support a straggle of low branches.

Similarly, olive trees grow endemically. They root on the sides of steep goat-defying hillsides and send out shoots under rocks, which thunder down hillsides when trees mature. Roots from olive trees spuriously displace sidewalks, house foundations, or walls when the tree is located in more urban areas.

The fruit of an olive tree—if you haven’t seen an olive outside its role as hors d’oeuvres or in a martini—is not to be rhapsodized. A mature olive is either black or green and has the density of a bullet. The same can be said for the olive pit which is a jawbreaker.

In Greece, the harvest of olives is to witness an attack on the tree by swarms of people who thrash the tree with long rods to knock the fruit loose so it will fall into a net. Human hands then transfer the olives, (worms and insects, too) into 100-pound bags. These are trucked to the olive press where a Rube-Goldbergian system of faucets, troughs, and water sprays await the grinding of two Cyclopean stones, which crush the olives, bugs, and worms into a paste which is steamed and then cooled until the oil flows from the final faucet. Witnessing the production of olive oil is a Stygian task: noise, heat, and confusion are all ingredients of good olive oil.

With these disclaimers, it must be said that the olive tree may be likened to Cinderella who, though clad in plain clothes, was industrious and practical before she caught the eye of the prince. In the same way, the olive tree, not being particularly beautiful when compared to the cypress or plane tree, certainly surpasses either of those trees in its usefulness and efficacy. With few exceptions, olive trees produce regularly. Olives ask little in the way of pampering. During the hottest of summers and the coldest of winters, olive trees not only endure, they produce.

Along with its indestructibility and its utility, olive oil has served Greece with a livelihood. Olive oil, no matter how unattractive and uninspiring in preparation, has served as the Mediterranean aspirin for years. Got a headache? Stomach bothering? Can’t sleep? Aches and pains in the legs, arms, chest? Have a spoonful of olive oil. Useful in cooking, oiling hinges, lubricating farm implements, or as medicine, olive oil is the WD-40 of all times.

The olive tree and the olive, then, are far more than the sum of its separate parts. The olive has been a part of Western culture for more than 4000 years. Homer probably survived on olives when he was writing (what else would an itinerant poet eat?). Odysseus certainly used olives for survival during his long trek home and the Trojan horse was undoubtedly made of olive wood.

Today, groves of olive trees spot the countryside of Greece and Mediterranean countries, providing food and livelihood. Even today in Athens, people buy olive trees in ceramic pots. Perhaps it is part of the DNA of the Mediterranean ….but the tree and its fruit serve as a talisman of good luck, fortune and smiles.

Johnny Appleseed never had it like that.

Chip Ammerman
Pigis Afroditis 3
Melissia, 151 27
Athens, Greece
 

Mission Olive Preservation Project News

The Mission Olive Preservation, Restoration, and Education Project, Inc. announced its new board of directors:  Ron Chapman, of Sonoma, President; Dolores laGuardia, of Sunnyvale, Vice President; Nina Keene, of Sonoma, Treasurer; and Barbara Rouseff, of Sacramento, Secretary.
 
Organized eight years ago, the Mission Olive Preservation, Restoration, and Education Project (MOPREP) has propagated over 500 heritage Mission olives, grown from the only known remaining olive orchard planted by the Franciscan fathers and Chumash people over two-hundred years ago.
 
Using the same methods as the padres did to bring the olive trees from Spain to Baja to Alta California, each MOPREP tree is grown from truncheons or cuttings taken from the only known remaining Mission grove. (Truncheons are twelve to fourteen-inch logs propagated for several months in warm, wet sand until they sprout and can then be transplanted to pots or into the ground.)
 
Two-hundred years ago, most of the twenty-one missions that stretch the length of California, from San Francisco de Solano to San Diego de Alcalá,  included their own olive groves.  Today, only one grove remains. Rarely within the mission walls, olive trees were usually planted outside, closer to a consistent source of water. Unfortunately, between the time the Missions were secularized by the Mexican government in the 1830s and contemporary restoration efforts, which have been focused on the missions themselves not on their agricultural legacy, most of the original groves have died from neglect, were built over, or were simply lost and forgotten.
 
In 1998, Gabrielle Leonhard found the Mission La Purisima grove and organized MOPREP, a nonprofit project dedicated to finding and restoring any remaining Mission olive groves; propagating truncheons and cuttings from the La Purisima grove, from which over 1000 new trees have resulted; providing support and expertise in replanting Mission groves that, eventually, will allow each mission to produce its own sacramental and commercial oil; educating the community on the cultural, historical, agricultural, and nutritional importance of olive oil; and raising funds for MOPREP to continue its restoration efforts, to DNA and date test various groves as they are discovered and to develop educational materials.
 
In the last eight years, the Mission Olive Preservation, Restoration, and Education Project has authenticated the La Purisima grove and completed a structural pruning of its thirty-seven trees.
 
MOPREP’s other projects have included the restoration of Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo’s Sonoma estate, Lachryma Montis (now a California state park) and the recovery and replanting of second and third generation groves at the Sonoma, San Jose, and Soledad missions.
 
MOPREP can ship trees anywhere in California, or trees can be purchased at a local fairs and festivals.  
 
More volunteers are always welcome, and MOPREP needs everyone’s support.  Contact the Mission Olive Preservation, Restoration, and Education Project through its website at http://www.missionolive.org or call Ron Chapman at 707-996-8984 or Dolores LaGuardia at 408-992-0136.
 

Market Glenn Looks for Links

University of California Cooperative Extension for Glenn County is soliciting agricultural producers and service companies to list themselves at Market Glenn.  The web page is intended to bring consumers, producers and suppliers of local agricultural products and services together. The service echoes the charter of the extension to support local agriculture.  There is no endorsement of products by the extension.

Food fads have come and gone but for several decades we have been allured by the low fat label.  The FDA even certifies low fat labeling, an indication of its permanence.  But new studies now show that the right type of fats may be more important than the amount.