These days, people understandably what to know where their food comes from. Here in the United States? China? Spain? We go a step further. We can tell you the ranch and the particular grove that supplied the olives used to make the oil inside each of our bottles.

You can see how we do it by looking at the back of a bottle of Olio Nuovo extra virgin olive oil. Below the “harvest” and “best by” dates are some numbers (see photo at right below). They identify a particular batch of oil based on the exact location of the grove of trees.

It’s known as “traceability.” We use a computerized system that tells us the date and time the olives were harvested, the ranch where they were grown, and the block of trees that produced the fruit. A block ranges from 10 to 100 acres.

Grape growers in the wine industry have long used such a computerized system. Lettuce and spinach growers have introduced the technology in response to food safety issues.

California Olive Ranch is the only U.S. EVOO producer using the system.

The technology isn’t cheap. It cost us more than a quarter of a million dollars to install and operate.

Why go to the trouble and expense?

Several reasons:

• We can identify which olives produce great oil and which produce good oil
• We can learn more about the growing conditions and farming practices that produce the best olives, and spread that knowledge among our growers
• If there’s a problem with a particular batch of olives, we can isolate the resulting oil in a particular storage tank so that one bad olive, so to speak, doesn’t spoil the entire bunch
• Knowing which olives produced the oil stored in various tanks allows us to better blend the oil once we bottle it; that way we maintain a consistent quality
• And by coding each of our bottles and boxes, we can keep track of who’s buying our EVOO once it leaves our mill – a particular grocery chain, for example, or a big restaurant operation

Here’s how we do it.

When a truck loaded with freshly harvested olives prepares to leave a ranch and head to one of our mills, a worker scans a bar code accompanying the olives and hands a bar-coded stub to the driver. The stub identifies the date, ranch and block for those particular olives.

At the mill, the driver hands one of our employees the stub as the olives are loaded on the conveyor belt to be cleaned, pressed, and turned into oil. The stub is scanned so we know the time and date the olives entered the mill.

We continue to track the olives via computer as they are: crushed; put in malaxation tanks where the oil is separated from the fruit; spun in a high-speed centrifuge to further separate any fruit particles from the oil; and pumped into storage tanks.

The information about each batch of olives ultimately is coded on every bottle and box of our EVOO.

That way, we know where the oil came from – and you will, too.

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

We’ve run across more misinformation about olive oil. The latest involves olive oil’s “smoke point.”

A cooking oil’s smoke point is the temperature at which the oil begins to break down and smoke. A high-quality extra virgin olive oil has a higher smoke point than other oils, making it very suitable for many forms of cooking, such as frying.

So it’s plain wrong to say olive oil isn’t suitable for stir-frying or frying. This belief mistakenly assumes olive oil, including extra virgin olive oil, has a low smoke point.

First, let’s clear up the misinformation about whether it’s OK to sauté, fry, roast and even deep fry with extra virgin olive oil. As I’ve noted before, cooking doesn’t destroy an EVOO’s healthful polyphenols. Even if your deep frying, the typical home stove doesn’t heat up enough to cause an issue.

“I tell my classes that in a home kitchen it’s very hard to burn olive oil,” says Nancy Ash, a trained olive oil taster and owner of the consulting firm Strictly Olive Oil.

Adds Karen Collins, a nutrition adviser for the American Institute for Cancer Research, a nonprofit which funds cancer-prevention research: “Extra virgin olive oil’s smoke point is generally given as 410 degrees Fahrenheit, which gives plenty of room for the 250-350 degrees Fahrenheit that covers most cooking.”

Chemistry plays a role here. A cooking oil’s smoke point depends on the amount of “free fatty acids” in the oil. High-quality EVOO, by the way, has low levels of the acids.

“The lower the free fatty acid content, the more stable the fat, and the higher the smoke point,” renowned food chemist Harold McGee writes in his book, On Food and Cooking (Scribner, 2004).

To be certified as genuine EVOO, the International Olive Council’s guidelines require that an olive oil must have a free fatty acid content of less than 0.8%. The California Olive Oil Council’s standards are stricter, saying a true EVOO must have an acidity level of less than 0.5%.

Our EVOO’s acidity comes in at less than 0.3%, according to lab tests.

“So pay more for a well made extra virgin olive oil with a lower acidity and it’ll reward you with significantly more degrees of heating potential,” notes Australian olive oil expert Richard Gawel.  “In fact, the natural preservatives called polyphenols you find in EVOO protect it from heat degradation.”

Lasty, Gawel offers this advice when cooking with any type of oil:

“Breathing in the smoke from burnt oil (no matter what type) is a health hazard,” he says. “So watch that temperature and keep those exhaust fans on.”

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

I’ve been asked the question, “What exactly is a drizzle of olive oil?” Our friends in the culinary world have offered up a variety of responses. I’ve since come across another intriguing measurement for olive oil: a “glug.” The term seems to owe its use to British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, who uses it in his recipes.

At 34, Oliver has climbed to the top of the cooking world. He’s a TV star, operates restaurants, has his own magazine, and has penned a number of cookbooks. His recipes contain amusing directions, being at times detailed and other times vague.

“Trim and wash a large leek, remove the outer leaves, then slice it into 0.5cm/¼ inch pieces,” he writes for his roasted chicken breast with pancetta, leeks and thyme.

“Add these to the bowl with the leaves of a few sprigs of fresh thyme, a good glug of olive oil, small knob of butter, a pinch of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and a small swig of white wine and toss together.”

More examples:

• His recipe for oven-baked rigatoni with wild boar salami calls for “a good glug of olive oil.”
• The grilled or roasted monkfish with black olive sauce and lemon mash specifies “a couple of glugs of extra virgin olive oil.”
• And the crispy tortillas with guacamole says “3 glugs of extra virgin olive oil.”

So how much is a glug? “A glug is, um, a glug,” replied Oliver’s spokesman Peter Berry. “There’s no real ‘definition,’ as such but everyone knows what a glug is.”

Uh, okay.

We did, however, find a explanation of sorts on the forums section at Oliver’s web site.

“When you pour olive oil from the bottle it will usually come with little interruptions when air goes back into the bottle. The result is a sort of  glug, glug, glug … sound,” wrote a fan identifying herself by the moniker SusanneH. “One of those is as much as you need” for a glug.

SusanneH went on to explain “the exact amount is not so important and may depend a bit on your personal taste. So if you use roughly 1-2 tablespoons you should be fine.”

We tried to define a glug ourselves the other night while making a variation of garlicky spaghetti with Olio Nuovo (we substituted Arbosana for the Olio Nuovo.) The recipe called for about three-eighths of a cup of olive oil, providing us with the opportunity to measure how many glugs went into it. We lost count after about 20 of them.

We turned our attention to twirling and slurping the pasta.

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

Mover over Italy and Spain. Make way for California.

California’s olive oil industry has been on a tear the past decade, producing extra virgin olive oil rivaling the EVOO made in Italy, Spain, France, and elsewhere. And it appears our industry is positioned to become a heavyweight in the Golden State’s agriculture business.

I’m not the only one predicting this. A recent report from the Olive Center at the University of California, Davis, says “if the trends of recent years continue, olive oil will be a major California crop in the future.”

The UC Davis study offers a snapshot of our industry. It focuses on the method we use to plant our trees: super -high-density plantings. The result: a fresh, high-quality EVOO.

The speed in which we can harvest olives prevents the olive from decomposing before we extract the oil. The UC Davis study examines the super-high-density (SHD) olive industry starting in 1999 – when the first SHD olive trees were planted in California – through 2008. It shows that

• 12,138 acres of SHD olive trees were planted in California by the end of 2008.
• Large growers, including California Olive Ranch, accounted for 78% of all acreage planted; small growers followed at 12%; and medium growers accounted for 10%.
• Arbequina is the No. 1 olive variety planted in the SHD system, accounting for 78 percent of SHD acreage, or 9,400 acres.
• Arbosana is the No. 2 varietal at 16 percent, or 1,688 acres
• Koroneiki is No. 3 at 6 percent, or 681 acres

At California Olive Ranch, we have more than 5,000 acres of olive trees in northern California. We cultivate another 5,000 acres through the growers we work with under contract. All told, we have a bit more than 6 million trees under cultivation on some 10,000 acres.

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

We’re tuned into cyberspace – including Twitter and the blogosphere – so we see a lot of what people are saying about olive oil. Not surprisingly, we occasionally run across stuff that’s just plain wrong.

Fortunately, there are plenty of online experts jumping in to debunk bogus info.  “Just crap” is how Australian olive oil expert Richard Gawel described a misleading blog.

Two bits of misinformation caught our attention recently and I’d like to dispel the inaccuracies.

For starters, it’s just plain wrong that olive loses its healthy benefits when used in cooking. Likewise, it doesn’t transform into something unhealthy when heated above 350 degrees.  (Gawel used the “crap” comment in a Tweet about a blog post involving a discussion that erroneously tried to link olive oil – when heated to a certain temperature – to trans fat even though there’s absolutley no truth in that at all.)

People ask us if you can cook with extra virgin olive oil – or if it should be used only to finish a dish such as roasted vegetables or fish. Yes, you can roast and fry foods with EVOO. The food will taste better, for starters.

And, notes nutritionist Karen Collins, EVOO doesn’t suffer a significant loss in health benefits when used to cook. Collins is a nutrition adviser for the American Institute for Cancer Research, a nonprofit which funds cancer-prevention research.  “Olive oil is a very healthful oil and most people are aware of its heart-healthy monounsaturated fat,” she says.

Collins told us she wrote a piece for the AICR web site to deflect misinformation she’d read online about cooking and olive oil. In a Q&A, Collins responded to the question of whether EVOO “loses its health benefits when cooked?”

No, she says. It doesn’t destroy the polyphenols EVOO contains. Polyphenols, by the way, are chemical substances found in plants that may reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer.

The most surprising item we’ve found was a blog wrongly suggesting olive oil forms trans fats when heated. Trans fats are something totally different. They’re otherwise known as partially hydrogenated oils and are found in stick margarines, shortenings and some packaged goods and fast foods.

“Eating trans fats increases your risk of developing heart disease and stroke,” says the American Heart Association. “It’s also associated with a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes.”

Not a good thing, of course.

No matter what you do while you’re cooking at home, you fortunately can’t create trans fats yourself. They’re created through an industrial process known as hydrogenation, in which hydrogen is added to liquid vegetable oils to make them more solid.

“The hydrogenation process involves heating up oil under extreme pressure and then bubbling hydrogen gas through it in the presence of a Palladium metal catalyst,” Gawel writes in an informative FAQ. “For trans fats to form all of these conditions must be in place – heat and pressure and hydrogen gas and an appropriate catalyst.”

“It just can’t happen in your kitchen.”

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

If your New Year’s resolution involves healthier eating, chances are good you’ll be cooking with olive oil. So here’s a quick guide to understanding the difference between extra vrigin, light, pure and all the other labels and terms you’ll encounter at the store.

Here’s the rundown:

Extra virgin olive oil: The best taste, freshest flavor and typically the most expensive. “Extra virgin olive oil is essentially the naturally extracted juice from fresh olives,” writes Australian olive oil expert Richard Gawel. Because it’s not refined, EVOO contains more polyphenols than other olive oils. True EVOO also can’t have any flavor “defects” such as moldy olives, which can make the oil musty. The oil must meet rigid tasting and testing standards set by the International Olive Council. California is the only state that’s legally adopted strict standards for any olive oil sold in the state.

One problem: With the exception of California, the United States hasn’t adopted such standards. Consequently, not all extra virgin olive oil sold in the U.S. is the real thing. Overseas producers can ship olive oil here and call it extra virgin – even though it isn’t really EVOO. “They can, and they do,” says Nancy Ash, a trained olive oil taster and owner of the consulting firm Strictly Olive Oil.

First Cold Press: First cold press basically means the fruit of the olive was crushed exactly one time – i.e., the “first press.” The “cold” refers to the temperature range of the fruit at the time it’s crushed. The temperature can’t be too warm. Otherwise, the quality of the oil will suffer. But this  can be a misleading term if you’re looking for extra virgin olive oil because it only tells part of the story. EVOO needs to be first cold pressed to qualify as extra virgin olive oil but it also must pass numerous other tests to meet standards established by the International Olive Council or the California Olive Oil Council.

Pure Olive Oil/Olive Oil: Oil has been refined to remove any defects. It’s typically blended with a little extra virgin olive oil to add flavor.

Light Olive Oil: Not a diet product. It’s basically the same as “pure” olive oil. According to the University of California Cooperative Extension, the oil is made from refined olive oil that’s “light in flavor” – not calories or fat.

Pomace Olive Oil: Obtained by mixing solvents into the olive pulp. The pulp is a byproduct of the milling process. Heat is then used to extract additional oil from the pulp. Pomace oil has been found to retain traces of the chemical process.

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

It’s New Year’s resolution time. As good a time as any to spread the word about polyphenols. They’re found in olive oil. And if you haven’t heard about them, they promote good health and can help prevent disease.

So what exactly are polyphenols – other than a mouthful of a word? They’re chemical substances found in plants that may reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer. Extra virgin olive oil, in particular, is rich in polyphenols.

Unlike other olive oils, EVOO isn’t refined. So it contains more polyphenols than other olive oils – including much of the olive oil imported here from Europe.

That’s important from a health standpoint: Polyphenols are a potent antioxidant – one that can decommission a nasty molecule in your body called a free radical. Free radicals contain at least one unpaired electron. They can ricochet around inside your body and harm good cells.

In her book,The New American Olive Oil (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2009), Fran Gage describes the work of polyphenols this way:

“These antioxidants circulate in the body, hooking up with free radicals, unstable compounds thought to play a role in more than 60 different health conditions including cancer and atherosclerosis, as well as aging.”

Nutritionist  Lisa Sheldon, author of Olive Oil Baking (Turner Publishing, 2007), notes polyphenols “are vital to cellular health because they prevent damage from free radicals.”

Polyphenols, in other words, can nip some pretty serious problems in the bud.

Other foods rich in polyphenols include: onions, apple, tea, red wine, strawberries, blueberries, and cranberries.

Olio Nuovo – pressed right after the olives are picked – also happens to be a good source for polyphenols.

Here’s to a healthy 201o.

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

Extra virgin olive oil comes in various colors, from golden to green. But don’t let color sway your judgment about the actual quality of the oil inside the bottle. It would be like judging a book by its cover or a horse by its color. In other words, not a good idea.

“Color isn’t an accurate indicator of quality or taste,” olive oil expert Fran Gage writes in her excellent book The New American Olive Oil (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2009).

That’s why professional olive oil tasters use a special blue glass when they taste oils.  The blue tint is intended to mask the oil’s color so it won’t influence a taster’s judgment – although perhaps a black glass might do an even better job!

That said, an olive oil’s color will tell you other things. Olives harvested early in the season, for example, are naturally very green and therefore produce a greener oil.

“Olives picked early in the season tend to make green colored oil as they contain higher levels of chlorophyll,” Australian olive oil expert Richard Gawel writes in an excellent FAQ.

“Olives harvested late in the season will typically produce more golden colored oils due to a higher level of natural occurring levels of carotene-like substances. Both oils may be technically equivalent in quality but very different in style.”

So you want to avoid buying extra virgin olive oil in a clear bottle to see its color. Light is among the enemies of EVOO.

Together, heat, light and oxygen promote oxidation and can make the oil rancid.

“If you purchase a very green looking oil, make sure it is stored in a dark bottle in a dark place,” advises Gawel. “The stuff that makes it green (chlorophyll) helps start the reaction that makes oils rancid, but only in the presence of light.”

That’s the main reason we choose dark colored glass to bottle our extra virgin olive oils.

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

We’re full steam into our harvest season in northern California. That means were picking olives and bottling fresh extra virgin olive, known as Olio Nuovo. And while we’ve been putting a “Best By” date on all of our bottles of EVOO, we’ve just started printing the “Harvest Date” as well. Why? To give you as much information as possible about the oil you’re getting.

Each bottle of Olio Nuovo now shows the month and year when the olives used to make the oil in the bottle were harvested: NOV 2009, for example. Our new Everyday California Fresh EVOO also has a harvest date. We typically harvest in the months of October and November. All the oil we sell during a particular year is made from olives picked in the most recent harvest year.

The “Best By” date is the date by which we recommend the consumer use up the oil they purchased. This date assumes the bottle has NOT been opened. (We recommend using the oil within 30 to 60 days once it’s been opened.)

To make all this possible, we invested in a very sophisticated laser printer that allows us to do the following:

• First, the laser literally etches the “Best By” date in fine print into the glass. If you check the lower, side edge of the “Everyday” bottle you’ll see the “Best By” date no longer printed in ink. It’s now literally etched into the glass. It doesn’t rub off.
• That same printer also can print text onto a designated area of the label. That’s where we put the “Harvest Date” onto the bottle. Before this printer, we would have had to run thousands of labels with this date pre-printed. No more.
• Moving ahead, you’ll see us redoing the bottles for all of our other oils so they’ll include the “Best By” date and the “Harvest Date.”

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

Nancy Ash says people give her a “funny look” when she tells them what she does for a living. She spends a lot of time slurping olive oil and biting into slices of tart green apple. “I’m an olive oil taster,” says Nancy.

As a trained taster and owner of the consulting firm Strictly Olive Oil, Nancy walked a group of chefs and culinary pros through an olive oil tasting at our recent Harvest Retreat in northern California.

Here’s how she does it.

An extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)  tasting – like a wine tasting – really lets you experience an olive oil’s aroma, flavor and peppery quality, or pungency. You can also figure out what might be wrong. Mustiness or rancidity are “defects” found in lesser quality oils.

To be certified as  true “extra virgin,” an olive oil must pass a barrage of tests – some conducted by lab technicians, and others done by a panel of olive oil tasters, such as Nancy.

“The definition of extra virgin olive oil is based on chemical factors tested in a lab and specific flavors in the olive oil,” she told us.

It’s the taster’s job to analyze the aroma, taste, and pungency of the oil to see if it passes muster.

Here’s how to conduct a thorough tasting  – something you could do with friends at home. (By the way, biting into a tart green apple is a way to cleanse the palate.)

First, pour about a tablespoon of oil into a wine glass, or similarly tapered glass. (Expert olive oil tasters sip from the blue olive oil tasting glass, like the one pictured here.) Cover the glass with one hand while you hold the bowl of the glass in the other hand. You want the oil to be about 70 degrees Fahrenheit – considered the best temperature for tasting.

Next come the “Four S’s,” as Nancy describes them:

1. SWIRL – While you cover the top of the glass with one hand, swirl the oil to release the aromas.
2. SNIFF – Uncover the glass and hold the top up to your nose and quickly smell the oil. The scent is key to the oil’s fruitiness. You want to get one big “sniff impression” of the oil.
3. SLURP – Take a sip of the oil while also “sipping” a bit of air. The slurping action combines the oil with the air and spreads it throughout your mouth. Notice the oil’s “smell” in your mouth – the retro-nasal aromas – as well as the different sensations throughout your mouth.
4. SWALLOW – Don’t worry, it’s just a small amount of oil! Notice if there is a peppery or stinging sensation in your throat, and how long the sensation lingers.

While tasting the oil, keep in mind the three positive attributes of true extra virgin olive oil:

• Fruitiness, which you can sense from smelling the oil.
• Bittery, reflected in a pleasantly bitter taste. “It’s a natural expression of the olive,” said Nancy.
• Pungency, the peppery or stingy sensation in your throat when you swallow the oil.

If you plan to sample another oil, take a bite from that tart green apple I mentioned, followed by a swig of water. That will cleanse your palate.

Finally, here’s something to keep in mind while you taste. Unlike other countries, the United States hasn’t adopted standards defining extra virgin olive oil. The bottom line: Not all “extra virgin olive oil” sold in the United States is the real thing – although EVOO produced in California must be officially certified.

That said, slurp away!

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch