If you’ve ever wondered whether you can buy a bottle of our extra virgin olive oil at a nearby store, there’s now an easy way to find out. You can even better plan your errands so you can get your car’s oil changed, while you’re shopping for EVOO and any other grocery items.

It’s all thanks to our web development team and Google maps. Our web developers have used Google maps to develop an online store locator which lets you know whether your local grocery or another nearby retailer carries our EVOO.

There’s a reasonable chance they do. Our EVOO is now carried by retailers in more than 40 states, in addition to Canada, Japan and Germany. And we’re adding new stores to the system as soon as they begin stocking our oil.

Here’s how it works. Click on the “Store Locator” link in the upper right-hand area of the California Olive Ranch web site.

Once you arrive at the store locator page, enter your address, city, or postal code. For this example we typed in 80439, the zip code for Evergreen, Colo., located in the foothills west of Denver. We asked to display all the retailers carrying our EVOO within 25 miles.

Seven green olive icons popped up on a Denver area map, including one pinpointing the address for the Walmart Supercenter in Evergreen. You can get directions to the store. And, because the store locator is linked to Google maps, you can also see what other retailers are located nearby.

Retailers located near the Evergreen Walmart Supercenter include Home Depot, a Sherwin-Williams paint store, a Starbucks (naturally), and a quickie oil-change business.

We still accept online orders if you don’t yet have a local source for our EVOO. But if you’re unsure, try our store locator. You may be able to get your EVOO even more quickly, as well as that long overdue oil change for your car.

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

We’ve been test driving a simple method to cook seafood by poaching it in extra virgin olive oil. It produces phenomenal results. The halibut we poached was moist. It had a rich, yet delicate, flavor. Our nine-year-old recipe tester declared: “Good fish!” An added bonus: You can reuse the EVOO.

Culinary pros are big fans of poaching in olive oil. Seafood guru Dory Ford says fish is perfect for poaching in a high-quality extra virgin olive oil. “Fish is mild and it’s fairly neutral in its flavor. So it’s going to take on the flavor characteristics of the olive oil,” says Ford, the chef-owner of Aqua Terra Culinary, a Pebble Beach, Calif., firm that handles catering, event planning, and menu consulting.

New York Times food writer Mark Bittman writes that “dense, white-fleshed fish like halibut and monkfish “come with a built-in difficulty: They must be cooked through to be tender, but such thorough cooking tends to make them dry. Among the techniques that solve this problem is one that is not used as often as it might be: poaching in olive oil.”

We tried Bittman’s recipe for poaching halibut. We didn’t have access to halibut steaks, as he suggests, so we used fillets. We used two cups of our California Everyday EVOO. Following the recipe, we carefully heated the oil in a deep skillet until it reached 200 degrees Fahrenheit. We used an instant read thermometer to keep tabs on the temperature.

We then slid our halibut fillets into the EVOO along with some root vegetables for added flavor: carrots, shallots and garlic. Use as many vegetables as the pan will hold.

Using our thermometer, we kept a careful eye on the temperature to ensure it stayed within a 180-200 degree F. band. One thing chefs tell us: Be patient and avoid pushing up the temperature to speed the poaching process.

“You lose some of that silky texture and (the fish) become firmer,” says Gregory Strickland, an executive chef for Vi, the upscale senior living center chain formerly known as Classic Residence by Hyatt. Strickland heads the kitchen at the Vi in Highlands Ranch, Colo.

After about 15 minutes we carefully flipped our halibut and continued poaching until the fish and vegetables were tender enough to be pierced through with the end of a thin-bladed knife, about 25 minutes.

The halibut, pictured above, was among the most succulent fish dishes we’ve ever had. The root vegetables that accompanied the fish in the pan also were delicious.

To save your EVOO for future use, chefs recommends carefully pouring the cooled oil back into a container such as a jar or bottle, while leaving any sediment or juices in the pan. We strained the oil through a fine-mesh strainer. Keep the oil in the refrigerator. “It extends its life and keeps it fresh,” says Ford, a leader in the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program which promotes the use of sustainable seafood.

We used our leftover EVOO to poach Coho salmon, which also was excellent.

What other seafood is good for poaching? Ford also recommends lobster, California Albacore tuna, and Pacific white sea bass. If you want to be more adventurous, Bittman recommends octopus.

Bon appétit,

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

Little olives can deliver a potently spicy punch. That’s the case with our Koroneiki olive, one of the olive varietals we grow in northern California. Koroneiki hails from Greece, and it’s become popular among Golden State olive growers. I rate the pungency of our extra virgin olive oils by how many times people cough when they swallow the oil at a tasting. Our Koroneiki EVOO is a “two or three cougher.”

It delivers a deliciously robust flavor, and finishes with a pleasant, peppery zing in the throat. Koroneiki oil, which we blend into our other oils, is the most pungent EVOO we produce. We hold EVOO tastings for chefs and other people and, sure enough, our Koroneiki has people clearing their throats.

In addition to a fruity nose and a strong, peppery finish, our Koroneiki is characterized by aromas of fresh grass and artichokes. Our miller Bob Singletary says the complexity of Koroneiki makes it a favorite of people who enjoy a Tuscan-style flavor profile.

We have some 10,000 acres of olive trees under cultivation in northern California. They produce Koroneiki as well as two Spanish varietals: Arbequina and Arbosana. Arbequina accounts for about 70% of our olives and Arbosana 20%. Koroneiki represents the remaining 10% of the olives we harvest using a system known as “super high-density” (SHD) planting.

Koroneiki also happens to be the third largest olive varietal grown in California. A recent report from the Olive Center at the University of California, Davis, finds that Koroneiki accounts for 6% percent of California’s SHD acreage, or 681 acres.

Unlike Arbequina and Arbosana, we don’t bottle our Koroneiki oil as a single varietal extra virgin olive oil. Instead, virtually all the EVOOs we make get a “shot” of Koroneiki, such as our Miller’s Blend and Everyday California EVOO. (One exception: If we bottle something as “Arbequina” — meaning there’s only Arbequina in the oil — then there’s no Koroneiki in that product.)

Blending Koroneiki into our other EVOOs “kicks up” an oil’s flavor and fruitiness, giving the oil a better and more complex taste.

The Koroneiki olive tree has grown in Greece for more than 3,000 years. It’s cultivated there to produce oil. The tree is a prolific olive producer.

In addition to pungency, the little Koroneiki olive delivers a healthful punch. It has a very high level of polyphenols, the chemical substances found in plants that may reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer.

Bon appétit,

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

Important news out today in the olive oil world: A major study finds U.S. consumers often pay premium prices for imported olive oil labeled “extra virgin” when in fact it’s cheaper, lower quality oil.

Tests conducted at two respected laboratories revealed that 69% of the imported oils labeled extra virgin failed to meet taste, smell and chemical standards established by the International Olive Council (IOC) and the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. Only one of the 10 California-made olive oils labeled extra virgin failed to meet the standards.

The defective oils included many leading and private label brands. They were bought at supermarkets and big box retailers in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sacramento.

“The oils that failed our tests had defects such as rancidity and many of these oils did not taste good,” said Dan Flynn, executive director of the Olive Center at the University of California, Davis. “Before this study, we had anecdotal reports of poor quality olive oil being sold as extra virgin but now we have empirical proof.”

Full disclosure: California Olive Ranch helped fund the study. But we had no influence on the methodology, brand selection, or outcome.

The study was conducted jointly by the UC Davis Olive Oil Chemistry Laboratory and the Australian Oils Research Laboratory, a government research center and certified IOC testing laboratory.

Our Everyday California Fresh EVOO was among the brands tested. The study confirmed our Fresh EVOO complied fully with the IOC and USDA’s standards for extra virgin olive oil, as well as stricter standards established by the California Olive Oil Council (COOC).

All three sets of standards stipulate that olive oil labeled extra virgin can’t have any “defects.” The imported oils that failed to meet the international standards were found to be too old, of poor quality, and adulterated with cheaper, refined olive oil. The defective California oil didn’t pass taste and aroma standards created by the IOC and USDA.

For the study, researchers bought 52 samples of 14 readily available imported brands and 5 California brands of olive oil sold under extra virgin olive oil labels.

The oils were divided and analyzed by the California and Australian researchers. They tested the oils for their taste, aroma and chemical makeup.

We like to tell people our oil is significantly better and fresher than mass-produced oils imported into the United States from overseas.

For starters, the olives are grown in California’s unique “terroir” and pressed at our state-of-the-art mills here. Our oil doesn’t sit on a cargo ship for several weeks, journeying across the ocean.

Working closely with our skilled “ranchers,” we’re very careful about choosing the optimal time to harvest the olives in the fall. Our employees then get the olives from tree to mill quickly.

How? We plant our trees using a system known as “super high-density plantings.” It allows us to grow the trees in hedge rows of 570 to 670 trees per acre, versus traditional plantings of 100 to 150 per acre.

That way, employees driving our harvesting machines can harvest the trees more rapidly – and deliver the olives within hours to our mills, where they’re crushed into EVOO. It’s this speed which prevents the olive from decomposing before we extract the oil.

Part of the reason bogus EVOO can be sold in this country is because there are no federal standards governing quality. The USDA recently adopted standards meant to ensure the bottle of extra virgin olive oil you buy at the store is genuine and not some fake EVOO.

The new federal standards, however, are voluntary. They go into effect this fall.

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

California’s winemakers looked to countries such as France, Italy, and Spain for the grapes they now grow here and crush into wine. Chardonnay, as you may know, is the white grape of France’s famed Burgundy region. California’s extra virgin olive oil industry is much the same. We use olives that hail originally from Spain and Greece and are now grown and crushed here.

I’ve been writing about our olive varietals, starting with the Spanish Arbequina olive. Next up: Arbosana, another Spanish varietal we grow and crush into EVOO.

We have some 10,000 acres of olive trees under cultivation in northern California. They produce three olive varietals: Arbequina and Arbosana, both from Spain, and Koroneiki, from Greece. Last week I focused on Arbequina, our No. 1 varietal. It accounts for about 70% of our olives.

Arbosana is our No. 2 olive, representing about 20% of the olives we harvest using a system known as “super high-density” (SHD) planting. Arbosana also happens to be the second largest olive varietal grown in California. A recent report from the Olive Center at the University of California, Davis, finds that Arbosana accounts for 16% percent of California’s SHD acreage, or 1,688 acres.

Like Arbequina, the Arbosana tree is small in stature. Similarly, the Arbosana tree is a workhorse, producing large numbers of olives.

Our Arbequina and Arbosana EVOOs also happen to be the two single varietal oils we produce. Our Miller’s Blend, by contrast, combines our Arbequina and Arbosana EVOOs.

How do the Arbequina and Arbosana olives differ?

“The Arbosana variety has fruit that looks very much like Arbequina, but matures about three weeks later,” writes olive oil expert Paul Vossen, farm adviser for the University of California Cooperative Extension in Sonoma County.

Arbosana also yields a more “robust” oil than Arbequina, which produces a “delicate” EVOO. In particular, Arbosana tastes more peppery, or pungent. The olive also delivers a higher level of polyphenols – the chemical substances found in plants that may cut the risk of heart disease and cancer.

And the taste? Arbosana delivers hints of green tomato, almond, and green banana.

Olive oil expert and cookbook author Fran Gage recommends serving robust oils such as Arbosana brushed atop bruschetta, in Spanish romesco sauce, and with all things chocolate. We’ve baked chocolate  madeleines using our Arbosana EVOO, substituting the olive oil for butter. They were phenomenal.

Bon appétit,

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

Think of extra virgin olive oil like wine. That’s what we sometimes tell people when we talk about the different extra virgin olive oils we produce. Just like different wines are made from different grapes such as Cabernet Sauvignon or Sauvignon Blanc, different olive oils are made from different olives. Each olive varietal has its own flavor profile and personality, just like wine grapes.

Hundreds of varieties of olives are grown around the globe. We grow three varietals in California: Arbequina, Arbosana, and Koroneiki. We use the olives to produce single varietal oils — namely our Arbequina and Arbosana EVOOs — as well as blended oils like Miller’s Bend.

I’ll focus on the Arbequina olive here and look at Arbosana and Koroneiki in future posts.

We have some 10,000 acres of olive trees under cultivation across northern California, from Fresno north to Corning. Arbequina is our No. 1 olive. It represents 70% of the olives we harvest using a system known as “super high-density” (SHD) planting.

The Arbequina olive hails from Catalonia, in Spain. It has become a favorite among growers here in the Golden state. A recent report from the Olive Center at the University of California, Davis, found that Arbequina accounts for 78% percent of California’s SHD acreage, or 9,400 acres.

The Arbequina tree is relatively small. It has weeping branches. The oval-shaped olives the tree produces are small, too. The olive resists frost well. It ripens relatively early versus other varietals.

In Europe, you can sometimes find an Arbequina olive tree put in a pot and placed at the front entrance of cafés.

Our Arbequina EVOO is a “delicate” oil that delivers a lot of fruit aroma, balanced pungency, and a very pleasing clean taste. In particular, we find it tastes of ripe tropical fruits, apple, and fresh artichoke.

Our Arbequina EVOO won raves from Cook’s Illustrated for the oil’s “fresh, sweet, fruity flavor and pleasing hint of bitterness.”

Different olive oils, like different wines, pair well with particular foods. Arbequina goes well drizzled over meats to bring out the meat’s sweetness. It also goes well with “strong” pestos such as one made from wild arugula and dishes that use blue cheese. Arbequina makes a delicious ice cream, too.

We recommend using Arbequina for baking, particularly when substituting olive oil for butter. Try it in pound cake. You won’t be disappointed.

Bon appétit,

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

With summer about to arrive, we decided it was time to consult some grilling experts for tips on cooking over live fire.

We got on the phone and dug into the cookbooks of some of our favorite grilling gurus: Steven Raichlen’s Barbecue! Bible (Workman Publishing Co., 2008); Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby’s License to Grill (William Morrow and Co., 1997); and John Ash’s John Ash Cooking One on One (Clarkson Potter, 2005).

Here’s our Top 10 grilling checklist:

1. Be organized. Get all your equipment, food, marinade/basting sauce/seasonings/etc. beside the grill before you begin grilling.
2. Start with a clean grill. “There’s nothing less appetizing than grilling on dirty old burnt bits of food stuck to the grate,” Raichlen writes.
3. Oil the grill after it’s hot and right before you place the food on the grate to prevent food from sticking.
4. Build a two-level fire with two temperatures: a hotter area and a colder area. That allows you to sear and caramelize your food or slowly finish cooking.  “It gives you flexibility,” Ash told us. He noted a two-level fire was particularly important for foods that take longer versus, say, shrimp.
5. Check frequently to see if your food is done. “Start checking several minutes before you think the food is going to be done so that you don’t overshoot,” Schlesinger and Willoughby write.
6. Preheat the grill to the correct temperature. If using charcoal you want the coals a uniform gray. Schlesinger and Willoughby use the following method. Place your hand 5 to 6 inches above the grill. If you can keep it there for six seconds, or a count of six one-thousand, you’ve got a low fire; five seconds equals medium-low; three to four seconds is medium; two seconds equals medium-hot; and one second equals “truly hot.”
7. Keep a spray bottle of water next to the grill “to put out any grease fires and also to cool things down” if necessary, Ash notes.
8. Don’t stab your food with a fork. You’ll lose the precious juices. Instead, use tongs or a spatula to turn your food.
9. If using charcoal briquettes or hardwood lump charcoal, don’t be stingy with your fuel. Schlesinger and Willoughby point out grilling is “a high-heat cooking method” which delivers “that awesome grilled flavor” you can’t achieve with a stove-top grill.
10. Let your food rest a few minutes after you take it off the grill. This is particularly true with beef, steak, pork and chicken. That time allows the meat to “relax,” Raichlen writes, and to become juicier and more flavorful.

You can also check out our tips for grilling with extra virgin olive oil, including using EVOO as a basting liquid for chicken, Cornish hens or veggies.

Bon appétit,

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

Many people have asked us about our “green” farming practices.

We’re happy to tell them we use less water, recycle our waste, and minimize our use of fertilizer.

Here are a few key details:

Reduced Water Use

We use half the water per acre that other orchard crops require. How? We use drip irrigation to water our trees. That means less water is lost to evaporation. Also, the “super high density (SHD) system” we use to plant our trees means we use less water, because our trees are planted closer together than trees in traditional olive groves.

Reduced Waste

One hundred percent of our olive harvest waste is recycled.

Here’s how we handle the byproducts of our extra virgin olive oil:

• The waste water is filtered and then used on our ranches for irrigation
• The leftover olive fruit and pits, or pomace, are sold to cattle stockyards as cattle feed.

We also recycle all our tree trimmings. They’re mulched back into the soil on our ranches.

As a result, no waste is ever sent to a landfill.

Efficient Farming and Reduced Fertilizer Use

Very little of our land is “wasted.”

Our SHD growing process allows us to use the land more efficiently. We plant our semi-dwarf olive trees 575 to 670 trees per acre. That’s well below the traditional method of 100 to 150 trees per acre.

In addition to high yields per acre, the SHD method of olive cultivation requires much less fertilizer. Similarly, we “stress” our trees – much like vineyard operators do for wine grapes – to boost our oil output. That, too, means we can apply less fertilizer.

Bon appétit,

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

Big news out of Washington: Uncle Sam has adopted landmark rules meant to ensure the bottle of extra virgin olive oil you buy at the store is genuine and not some fake EVOO.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture last week issued new standards that will govern the different grades of olive oil sold in this country, including extra virgin. The new standards, which run nearly 20 pages, were 5-1/2 years in the making. They replace outdated ones adopted back in 1948.

The USDA said the standards will “provide consumers more assurance of the quality of olive oil that they purchase.”

The California Olive Oil Council, the trade group which had sought the overhaul, called it “an historic achievement for consumers, retailers and the entire California olive oil industry.”

We certainly hope so.

The new U.S. standards for EVOO take effect Oct. 24. They’ll match the international standard set by the International Olive Council (IOC).  There’s been no such EVOO standard here up to now.

That has meant olive oil producers overseas could unload “extra virgin olive oil” in this country that in fact did not meet IOC standards. This was particularly the case with certain “supermarket” oils.

A wonderful article in The New Yorker recounted how U.S. marshals in 2006 seized 61,000 liters (16,000 gallons) of what was purportedly EVOO and 26,000 liters (6,900 gallons) of a lower-grade olive oil from a New Jersey warehouse.

Some of the oil, in fact, “consisted almost entirely of soybean oil,” according to the article.

“My experience over a period of some fifty years suggests that we can always expect adulteration and mislabeling of olive-oil products in the absence of surveillance by official sources,” David Firestone, a U.S. Food and Drug administration chemist who was the agency’s olive-oil specialist from the mid-sixties to 1999, told The New Yorker.

Let’s hope the new standards change that situation.

Bon appétit,

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

Here’s a topic I get asked a lot about: unfiltered versus filtered extra virgin olive oil. What’s the difference?  Why filter EVOO? Which tastes better? Do you filter your extra virgin olive oil? (No.)

I’ve fielded these questions upwards of 200 times over the past couple of years. I hear them from customers, chefs, friends, and family members.

Basically, filtering involves putting the oil through a thick layer of cotton to trap any tiny particles of olive fruit that may be in the oil. That’s the gist.

We don’t filter our EVOO. We remove those fruit particles with the help of Mother Nature, namely gravity.

Here’s how. Initially, we wash the olives before we crush them. After crushing, the resulting olive paste is sent to high-speed centrifuges where the oil is separated from fruit particles and water.

As a general rule, the remaining fruit particles – similar to pulp in orange juice – can really enhance the taste and flavor of the EVOO. The fruit particles contribute to what makes our limited-release Olio Nuovo EVOO taste so fantastic. But over time those same fruit particles will eventually ferment. That’s why our Olio Nuovo is dated on the bottle to be consumed quickly.

By contrast, we need to remove the remaining fruit particles in our other oils that require a longer shelf life. Larger producers from Europe do this by filtering the oil. We don’t typically do that.

We pump the oil into large storage tanks housed inside a temperature-controlled room. (The exception is our Olio Nuovo, which we bottle immediately.) Inside the tank, the oil is allowed to settle for two to three months so Mother Nature can “suck” any remaining fruit particles to the bottom. This process is called “racking.”

During racking we move the oil from tank to tank about every month to remove the sediment and clean the tank. The racking process typically is completed in late January, which allows our new oil to ship by Feb. 1^st or so.

The most noticeable difference between an unfiltered and a filtered EVOO is appearance. The unfiltered oil may appear a bit cloudy, owing to residual fruit particles that weren’t removed through gravity in the settlement tank. Once an oil has been fully racked, however, the lower concentration of remaining fruit particles no longer has an adverse effect on the oil’s lifespan or quality.

Which tastes better – an unfiltered oil, or a filtered one? Some people say filtering has little effect on taste. Others argue the residual fruit particles in an unfiltered EVOO generate added flavor.

Like many things, it’s probably more a matter of personal taste.

Bon appétit,

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