One sure sign that something has entered the mainstream is when it surfaces as a puzzle solution on TV’s “Wheel of Fortune.” That was the case one recent night, when Vanna White turned over the letters to spell out “extra virgin olive oil.”
“It took 20 years, but we are finally getting recognized,” said vintner Bruce Cohn, who in 1990 started harvesting olives from trees on his Sonoma Valley winery estate. “After making estate oil from these Picholine olives for just a couple of years, we could see the demand was rising.”
According to industry observers such as Patricia Darragh, executive director of the California Olive Oil Council, demand for this particular agricultural product is expected to continue rising. Olive tree planting is continuing apace, said Darragh, noting that there are now 21,000 acres of orchards in California. “We’re adding about 10,000 acres a year,” she said, adding that the projected total by 2020 is 10 times that. All the producers interviewed for this article produce extra-virgin olive oil, meaning that it is cold pressed, though not necessarily the very first oils processed from a given harvest.
Some 99 percent of the olive oil consumed in the U.S. is imported; most of the remaining one percent comes from California. Sonoma County had the largest number of producers of any county in the state, according to the Olive Oil Council’s last survey, in 2004. “That also showed that most growers were small, averaging 5 acres,” said Darragh. “We expect similar results from the 2009 survey.“
Sonoma’s production, from some 150 growers, is dwarfed by production in the Central Valley, which has an estimated 17,000 acres of orchards – mostly planted at high density – compared to the 2,000 on the North Coast, where trees are planted at a lower density, usually about 300 trees per acre. To boost the industry, in 2007 UC-Davis launched the first university-based olive research and education center in North America. It is part of the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science.
Like many others in the wine country, the olive trees on B.R. Cohn Winery’s eight-acre Olive Hill were first planted in the early 1800s. Immigrants from Italy and France and missionaries from Spain commonly brought cuttings with them when they settled in northern California in order to have the oil they preferred over butter or lard for eating and cooking.
Among those immigrants was one Gussette Giovannini, who brought a lone olive tree sapling when he moved his family from Lucca, Italy, to the U.S. in 1928. He planted the sapling on the family’s estate in the San Joaquin Valley. Giovannini’s great-grandson, Frank Figone, said he and his brothers were inspired to plant additional trees.
“Thirty-four years ago, we had one acre,” said Figone, who became a licensed olive oil manufacturer in 1991 and now runs the Figone Olive Oil Company in the Glen Ellen space formerly occupied by The Olive Press. “Today, we farm more than 200 acres all over Northern California.
“Growing up in an Italian household, we always used high-quality, extra virgin olive oil,” Figone said. Now that the American palate has become more sophisticated, he said, people here recognize and appreciate the complexities of olive oil. Figone claims to offer more oils at his tasting bar than any other place.
Outside of the Valley, some of the best-known producers include Ted Hall of Long Meadow Ranch and the MacDonnell family of Round Pond, both in Napa; McEvoy Ranch in Petaluma; and DaVero in Healdsburg.
There are obvious parallels between the California olive oil and wine industries – each has its own rites and rituals and even its own season, making them complementary crops. Moreover, both have achieved widespread recognition relatively recently, buoyed by advances in quality and the increasing concern with healthy foods, especially in this country.
“When we started making olive oil, we knew that interest in olive oil was growing,” said Ryan MacDonnell of Round Pond. “We’ve often likened it to the wine business 30 years ago, before the Paris Tasting and ‘60 Minutes’ and felt olive oil would be a similar case. But did we think consumption would have doubled in a period of 10 years? It’s grown beyond what we could have known.”
Olive oil sources in the wine country
B. R. Cohn, 15000 Hwy. 12, Glen Ellen;
707.938.4060; brcohnoliveoil.com
Figone’s Olive Oil, 14301 Arnold Dr., Glen Ellen; 707.938.3164; www.fingoneoliveoil.com
The Olive Press, 24724 Arnold Dr.
(inside the Jacuzzi Family Vineyards winery), Sonoma; 707.939.8900;
www.theolivepress.com
McEvoy Ranch, 5935 Red Hill Rd., Petaluma; 707.778.2307; www.mcevoyranch.com
Round Pond, Hwy. 29, Rutherford;
707.302.2575; www.roundpond.com
Long Meadow Ranch , 1176 S. Hwy. 29,
Rutherford; 707.963.4555;
www.longmeadowranch.com
Da Vero, 1195 Westside Rd., Healdsburg:
707.431.8000; www.davero.com
Sonoma Olive Festival heading into high season
Another indicator of success is the recurrence of the annual Sonoma Valley Olive Festival, which got underway last month with tastings, pressings and the Blessing of the Olives. The festival features tastings, seminars and other activities almost daily through Feb. 15.
“This is our eighth year,” said Wendy Peterson, executive director of the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau, “and it’s been a remarkable success, celebrating the ‘second harvest’ after the grape harvest. It’s been an ongoing celebration of what is unique about Sonoma Valley, part of our agricultural heritage.”
One of the biggest events of the season is Martini Madness (Jan. 9). Peterson is also excited about the Feast of the Olive Dinner (Jan. 24), which will showcase local chefs and wines and honor Deborah Rogers, co-founder of The Olive Press, for her contributions to the olive oil industry. The festival concludes on the weekend of Feb. 13-15, which features VinOlivo, a gala presented by Sonoma Valley Vintners & Growers Alliance on Feb. 13. (To read more about the festival, please see contributor Linda Castrone’s article in today’s issue of FineLife Home.
