We caught up recently with Mueller to ask him about the olive oil business and his love for olive oil. What follows is the second of a two-part Q&A, based on questions submitted by our Facebook fans. (Click here to see the first installment.)

Did you expect your book to make as much splash as it has?

I really didn’t. It’s heartening to see the level of interest. Olive oil does have all the numbers to be the next home run food after wine, craft beer, artisanal cheese, dark chocolate, and fine sea salts. Unfortunately with olive oil, at the moment, there’s so much murk and so much confusion.

Is there an olive oil mafia?

The term “mafia” with a small “m” is used in Italian all the time, not for Cosa Nostra but for people who are organized in a secretive, usually criminal fashion. In the case of olive oil today it’s not organized crime – not like characters from The Godfather, with scars across their cheek – but there are organized criminals. Back in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, mafia figures in America did use olive oil import businesses as fronts for their criminal activities. But today that’s not really the case.

What’s the best olive oil to use on the market today and why?

Much like wine, it really depends on what you’re going to use the oil for. There are 700-plus different kinds of olives and thousands of different oils – some big bodied and some milder. The choice of the right oil depends on the specific dishes you’re going to be using with it. (Click here to see blog post about pairing foods with olive oils.)

As somebody who lives in Italy, what do you think of California’s extra virgin olive oil?

Some of the best oils I’ve ever had were made in California. Great producers everywhere – in the Old World as well as the New World – are dealing with the same challenges: Use healthy fruit, pick and crush it quickly, store it properly in an oxygen-free environment, and get their consumers to consume it quickly.

How do you like to use extra virgin olive oil at home?

I like to reinvent American comfort foods with olive oil. I think a baked potato with olive oil instead of butter is incredible. Olive oil on a steak as steak sauce enhances the flavor and the texture of the meat. A full-bodied olive oil over vanilla ice cream creates a counter-point to the ice cream’s sweetness. (Click here to see our February eNewsletter showcasing comfort food.)

Bon appétit,

Your friends at California Olive Ranch

We caught up with Mueller last week when he had some down time during a very busy book tour. He’d also just testified before a California State Senate panel looking into the olive oil business.  We asked our Facebook fans to give us questions to ask Mueller. And we got some great ones, which you’ll see below in the first of our two-part Q&A.

How important is packaging to the shelf-life, quality, flavor, and stability of olive oil – dark glass versus clear, plastic or metal can, etc.?

It’s very important. Light, together with heat and oxygen, is one of the enemies of olive oil. Light causes olive oil to degrade. So dark glass that filters out light is very important. A metal container also is good. Clear plastic and glass are to be avoided. At home when you store your oil, don’t store it next to a stove or another source of heat. You also don’t want to store it next to a window where the light could hit it. Instead, store it in a cool, dark place.

Is packaging an indicator of quality in your experience?

It can be. If it’s in clear glass or plastic, the quality is likely to be low. In terms of the labeling, a few things to look for are the specific producer and place of origin – instead of some generic reference to more than one country. A harvest date is a good indicator that the producer is good.

A “best by” date, however, is essentially meaningless. It’s calculated by when the oil went into the bottle. In other words, the “best by” date clock starts ticking on the bottling date. So you don’t know whether the oil had been sitting in a storage tank for one month or one year. Another good sign is a seal – for EU oils it would be PDO (Protected Designation of Origin – “DOP” in Italian) . And for California oils there’s the COOC (California Olive Oil Council) seal.

What can a regular customer ‘Joe’ do when shopping for olive oil for his own use?

Apart from looking for oils in dark containers and carefully reading the labels, try to look for places where you can try the oil before you buy it. And visit a mill if you can – there you can see olives actually become oil. In stores, look for places that have a high turnover so that there aren’t bottles that have been sitting on the shelf for many months or even years. I’ve actually seen bottles with dust on them.

What is the No. 1 trait in any olive oil people should look for when searching for a good product?

I think the word is “freshness.” Olive oil is a fresh agricultural product. And, unlike wine, it doesn’t improve with age. Instead, it degrades with age. The younger the oil, the better.

What are the best ways to determine if olive oil is truly extra virgin, regardless of what the label says? In other words, it hasn’t been ruined by light, heat, age, etc.

You can’t really tell before you open the bottle, which is why knowing or trusting the individual producer is so important. Once you open it, a fresh flavor, as well as a certain amount of bitterness and pungency are good signs, and recognized by international regulations. By “fresh flavor,” I mean it reminds you of the fresh olive fruit.

Bon appétit,

Your friends at California Olive Ranch

Mueller, whose book was inspired by a 2007 New Yorker article, blames loose laws and lax enforcement for oil fraud here. “Much of the fake olive oil sold in America is imported,” he writes in his book Extra Virginity (W.W. Norton & Co., 2012). He cites a “rare intervention” in 2006 when federal marshals seized 61,000 liters “of what was supposedly extra virgin olive oil” from a New Jersey warehouse; it was really mostly soybean oil.

Two recent studies conducted in Australia and at the Davis campus of the University of California, meanwhile, have found widespread mislabeling in the extra virgin grade. (We’re conducting a Q&A with Tom Mueller and would love your input on what to ask. Click here to go to our Facebook page and post a question.)

How rampant is olive oil fraud here? Mueller quotes an Italian olive oil producer who estimates 50 percent of the oil sold in this country is bogus. Mueller notes the U.S. Food and Drug Administration considers olive oil adulteration a low priority. “We’re inclined to spend our money on things where there’s a clear public health benefit,” an FDA officials tells Mueller.

But there are promising signs on the horizon. And both olive oil producers and consumers here have a role to play.

“America, it seems, is developing an appetite for good olive oil,” Mueller writes. “What’s more, though the U.S. currently imports 98 percent of its olive oil, within its borders lies a production area of enormous potential.”

That area is California, which Mueller calls “potentially the most important new world of oil.”

“Olives, highly adapted to hot, dry climates, thrive here,” he says of the Golden State. He adds that in the past 15 years “Californians have started to get serious about making first-quality oil.”

For our part, we go to great lengths to ensure the oil we make is of the highest quality. It’s certified as true extra virgin by the California Olive Oil Council. The oil must first pass rigorous lab and taste tests to earn that certification.

We also want you to know as much as possible about the oil that’s in each of our bottles.

Every bottle has a date showing when the olives were harvested. We also give you a “best by” date. Moreover, we keep close track of our olives from when they’re picked to the time the oil is bottled. In fact, we can tell you where the particular olives were grown that were used to make the oil in each bottle.

Consumers, too, can help ensure quality olive oil is sold in this country. If Americans loved olive oil half as much as the typical Italian, Mueller says, our consumption would “far exceed” the three largest olive oil consuming nations: Greece, Italy and Spain.

That would have important ramifications, as our friend Paul Miller notes. Miller, the president of the Australian Olive Oil Association, tells Mueller Australia helped set the “new quality agenda” for olive oil — “but there are only 23 million of us.”

“America, with 300 million strong,” Miller adds, “has a vital role to play in taking this agenda global, and making it stick.”

Your friends at California Olive Ranch

Photo by Terry McCarthy www.tmcphotography.com

How was the weather?

We couldn’t have gotten any luckier. We had dry, mild weather throughout. It was better than previous years. No frost and no large rains that prevented us from harvesting.

We did start a little late, because the spring was cool. So the crop cycle was behind. But because the crop-load was light, we ended up harvesting it right about on time.

What was the big difference between the 2011 harvest and the 2010 harvest?

Photo by Terry McCarthy www.tmcphotography.com

There were less tons of fruit per acre than in 2010. So the olives produced an oil with a more robust flavor profile, because the flavor is concentrated in fewer olives. It’s similar to a wine grape crop when you thin the crop to allow the flavors to concentrate.

How would you characterize the differences between the three olive varietals you picked during the harvest?

The Arbequina crop was light so the fruit size was large and the fruit matured early with more intense flavors. Arbosana had a heavy year and so was late in maturing. Koroneiki was an average crop.

What do you like about this year’s Limited Reserve versus previous years?

The 2011 Limited Reserve is much more intense in flavor than the 2010, while still having a good balance.  That’s due, I think, to this year’s lighter crop. We also try to “stress” the trees going into harvest by not giving them as much water. It intensifies the flavor of the oil and also speeds the ripening process. (Adam, by the way, tells us he and his family have been enjoying Limited Reserve on simple green salads, where the flavor of the oil really stands out.)

How did the new harvesters perform that the company acquired?

Photo by Terry McCarthy www.tmcphotography.com

We’d been working on some prototypes for a couple of years. So this year we were ready to go. They performed very, very well. The new harvester was kind of the superstar of the year.  It’s built specifically for olives, and so it’s taller. It’s gentler when picking the tree. The older harvesters were retrofitted grape harvesters – the kind that vineyard operators use.

What was the first thing you did when the harvest ended?

We actually got done halfway through the day. We shaved the beards off. And then we sent the guys home for the entire weekend. It was the first day we’d had off in about four weeks. I think everyone went home and slept. People were working 14-hour days. We plan on a 12-hour shift; but we end up working a little bit longer. And then we run a day and a night shift; so it’s a 24-hour operation.

Bon appétit,

Your friends at California Olive Ranch

Photo courtesy of www.artisanbreadinfive.com

To assist you with your holiday baking and cooking, we’ve asked baking experts for tips on using olive oil with baked goods and desserts (you can click here to see an earlier blog post about how to substitute olive oil for butter in baking).

Below is a Q&A:

How should you approach pairing a dessert or baked good with a particular olive oil flavor profile?

Fran Costigan, vegan pastry chef: “Olive oil can be considered a flavoring agent for a dessert when you want to use the oil that way. … Think about what it is your making. A robust oil (like Arbosana) can go with some chocolate desserts, such as: a tartine, which is simply warmed melty chocolate on a crusty baguette, or an olive oil ganache spread on the bread, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with coarse sea salt. … When I want to taste the olive oil, I’ll go to an oil such as Arbequina, Arbosana, or Miller’s Blend.”

Matthew Kadey, registered dietitian and recipe developer: “I would use a more delicate flavored oil if you are just using the olive oil to add moisture to a baked item and don’t want its flavor to come through. But for items like dinner rolls that can benefit from olive oil’s flavor, I would gravitate towards a stronger flavored choice.”

Are there any particular desserts and dishes that go especially well with extra virgin olive oil?

Costigan: “It’s very nice in most all chocolate confections. I particularly like lemon scented chocolate olive oil sauces and creams. … Olive oil and almonds are great together, like my orange almond olive oil cake. For something different, drizzle a robust oil on the chestnut cake known as castagnaccio.” (The recipes for both of these cakes are featured in the recipe section of our website under desserts.)

Jeff Hertzberg, best-selling author of the new book, Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day (St. Martin’s Press, 2011): “I always drizzle it on top of pizza.”

What does extra virgin olive oil contribute to baked goods – flavor, texture, etc.?

Sarah House, recipe specialist for Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods: “Extra virgin olive oil produces light and moist baked goods with rich olive oil background notes while letting the accompanying flavors shine through.  There are all the nutritional benefits of olive oil — like very low saturated fat — and it helps extend the shelf life of the product.  Olive oil is an excellent fat for (my spelt cake with caramelized apples) to lighten the otherwise dense and heavy whole grain flours.” (Click here to see the recipe for the olive oil spelt cake.)

Kadey: “I find that it adds a nice earthy, peppery flavor to baked items. It’s an especially good addition to baked goods that you would consider more savory than sweet.

Bon appétit,

Your friends at California Olive Ranch

Photo courtesy of www.artisanbreadinfive.com

How can I substitute olive oil in a baking recipe that calls for butter, like a cake?  

“Olive oil can replace butter and margarine in almost all baked goods,” says Sarah House, recipe specialist for Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods, the Oregon provider of high-quality flours and other natural foods. “I use a 3:4 ratio – 3 parts olive oil is equal to 4 parts butter.”

In other words: If a baking recipe calls for a stick of butter (8 tablespoons), for example, use 6 tablespoons of olive oil. (Click here to see a conversion table.)

Are there times when I should avoid using extra virgin olive oil in a baking recipe that calls for butter?

Yes. “The only time olive oil is not an acceptable substitute for solid fats is in recipes that require a lot of creaming of the butter and sugar (super light and fluffy cakes), or when the fat needs to stay solid, as in a frosting,” House says.

Can I substitute extra virgin olive oil in a baking recipe that calls for a different oil, like canola or vegetable oils?

Why not! Extra virgin olive oil tastes better than “neutral oils” like canola and vegetable oil.  “Any dessert that’s already made with some kind of vegetable oil is a candidate for trying,” award-winning cookbook author and dessert guru Alice Medrich says.

We’ve found you can substitute olive oil for other oils on a one-for-one basis. If a recipe, say, calls for half a cup of vegetable oil, use the same amount of extra virgin olive oil. We’ve done this with carrot and chocolate cakes.

Can I use any type of olive oil in baking?

Not if you want to improve the flavor of your baked good. Use a quality olive oil that tastes good. “Only use an olive oil that you enjoy eating on salads, as a bread dip etc.,” Matthew Kadey, a registered dietitian, recipe developer, and magazine writer whose work has appeared in EatingWell and Men’s Health, says. “If you don’t particularly like the taste of a highly processed olive oil, why sully your baking with it. As the old saw goes: ‘Never cook with a wine you wouldn’t want to drink.’”

What’s so bad about using any olive oil off the grocery shelf?

Ask House, of Bob’s Red Mill. She initially tried using an “inexpensive, off-the-shelf extra virgin olive oil” while developing a recipe for olive oil spelt cake with caramelized apples. (Click here to see the recipe for the cake.)

“Wow, was it obvious that I had used low-quality oil.  The flavor of the oil overpowered the rest of the cake and left a noticeable aftertaste,” House explains.  “When I baked the cake a second time using the California Olive Ranch extra virgin olive oil, the final product was so much better.  There was a lighter, more fragrant olive oil flavor that melded nicely with the nuttiness of the spelt and the warmth of cinnamon and the texture was lighter, almost velvety.”

Bon appétit,

Your friends at California Olive Ranch

Photo by Terry McCarthy www.tmcphotography.com

Our milling team fired up the bottling line last Thursday and began bottling this year’s Limited Reserve, the freshest oil we produce. The oil goes straight from the press into the bottle, without spending any time in a tank where fruit particles are allowed to settle and be removed. (Click here to order Limited Reserve extra virgin olive oil.)

We bottle Limited Reserve just once a year, at the time of the fall harvest. Our harvest team wrapped up their work on Friday, trucking their last load of olives to our northern California mill. They met their deadline of getting the job done before Thanksgiving. We need to beat the first frost, which can damage the olives.

Luckily, our harvest crews got lots of sunny days over the past several weeks. They actually had to delay the start of our harvest, back in early October, because of rain. Mud can bog down our harvesters.

With the harvest completed, we can focus on making great extra virgin olive oil, like Limited Reserve. When you put a spoonful of this special oil in your mouth, you experience a peppery, fruity, pleasantly bitter burst of fresh olive oil taste.

Chefs we know like to use Limited Reserve as a finishing oil for a variety of dishes. Karl Mace, executive chef at the upscale Union Bluff Hotel in York, Me., told us he cooks Brussels sprouts in Limited Reserve and indulges guests by using it to sear and poach fish such as cod and haddock.

Our Limited Reserve also goes well with any number of hearty autumn vegetables. We  like it drizzled on bruschetta, white pizza, poached eggs, or tossed with pasta and garlic. And it’s perfect for dipping crusty bread accompanied by a sprinkle of flaky sea salt.

Bon appétit,

Your friends at California Olive Ranch

Limited Reserve is the freshest oil we produce. The oil goes straight from the press into the bottle, without spending any time in a tank where fruit particles are allowed to settle and be removed. We bottle Limited Reserve just once a year, during the fall harvest. (When we first started bottling this stuff we called it Olio Nuovo, an Italian term, to reflect that it’s the first “new oil” we press each year.)

Like fall, this oil is fleeting. Its eight-month shelf life is less than half that of our other oils, because the leftover fruit particles in these bottles ultimately ferment.

When you put a spoonful of Limited Reserve in your mouth, you experience a peppery, fruity, pleasantly bitter burst of fresh olive oil taste. You may find that this year’s Limited Reserve delivers an even more robust flavor profile, given the overall quality of our 2011 olive crop.

Limited Reserve goes well with any number of hearty autumn vegetables. We like it drizzled over roasted Brussels sprouts, sautéed broccoli, and grilled fennel. It’s also great drizzled on butternut squash soup right before serving.

Here’s a look at how we make our Limited Reserve, and what makes it special:

MILLING PROCESS: To craft Limited Reserve each fall, we harvest our olives and then quickly press them to preserve their freshness. We process the resulting olive paste in a centrifuge to separate the oil from the water and sediment. Bob Singletary, our veteran miller, personally tastes each batch of oil as it flows from the centrifuge spout.

SELECTION PROCESS: After he’s tasted all the oil, Bob selects several of the best oils and brings them to our offices. Our management team then conducts a blind tasting test, with everyone tasting and grading each sample. We swirl, sniff, slurp, and swallow the oil, analyzing the aroma and flavor profile.  We talk. And then we settle on the particular oil that becomes Limited Reserve.

BOTTLING: Right after we select the oil our milling team fires up the bottling line and starts bottling Limited Reserve. It’s November. By contrast, we typically start bottling our other oils the following February.

FLAVOR PROFILE: Limited Reserve’s flavor profile combines a strong and fruity aroma; the oil is smooth and buttery on the tongue; and it delivers a nice peppery finish.

COLOR: Very dark green. When you hold the bottle up you can see the sediment that’s escaped the centrifuge.

OTHER NOTABLE POINT: Our Limited Reserve differs from similar oils shipped from Europe. Ours hasn’t been sitting on a boat for four to six weeks.

USES: Great drizzled over roasted and grilled vegetables. Also good drizzled on bruschetta, white pizza, or tossed with pasta and garlic. Perfect for dipping crusty bread accompanied by a sprinkle of flaky sea salt. Try drizzled over poached eggs. Let your imagination run wild!

Bon appétit,

Your friends at California Olive Ranch

Photo by Terry McCarthy www.tmcphotography.com

“It’s scaring me it’s so good,” Adam said of the weather. “So we’re going to rock and roll here while the weather is good.”

Our harvest began a little more than two weeks ago. Rain delayed our crews a couple of days. The clouds then parted. We’re picking olives at our three northern California ranches. We own 5,000 acres of olive trees. And we operate another 7,000 acres under contract with outside growers.

Photo by Terry McCarthy www.tmcphotography.com

Adam’s goal: Wrap up the harvest by the end of November. We need to beat the frost, which can damage the olives. “I’m shooting to be done by Thanksgiving,” Adam told us as we watched the harvester pick the olives and deliver them into a tractor-driven wagon adjacent to the harvester.

Adam and his team are putting in 12-hour shifts. They harvest olives day and night, 24 hours a day. Our harvesters are fitted with lights, so the drivers can see where they’re going no matter what time of night.

Consequently, Adam and his crew will be burning the midnight oil from now through the end of November. “I get home at 11 pm and I go to work at 4:30 am,” Adam said.

We asked Adam about the quality of this year’s olive crop. He gave two thumbs up, explaining that the trees are producing a lighter crop. Consequently, the olives are ripening more evenly.

“It’s maturing more uniformly,” Adam noted. He also said this year’s olives are yielding oil that’s “a little more intense than last year.” (Olive oil aficionados refer to such oil as more “pungent.”)

That robust quality means you can expect this year’s oil to deliver a little more of a peppery tickle in the back of your throat. That will be noticeable soon when we bottle and ship our Limited Reserve extra virgin olive oil next month. It’s the freshest oil we produce, and goes straight from the olive press into the bottle. (Click here to join our VIP Mailing List to be notified when our Limited Reserve will be available.)

We’ll keep you posted on the harvest. Meanwhile, we’re keeping our fingers crossed – and an eye on Mother Nature.

Bon appétit,

Your friends at California Olive Ranch

Olives produce oils with different flavor styles based on when they were picked — from a robust style initially to a more delicate flavor near the end of the harvest. How do you work with those different flavor profiles?

We keep computerized tabs on the olives every single truck delivers to our mill. We know how mature the olive fruit is for each delivery, as well as the acidity of the olives. We’ll then run each truckload of olives along a certain production line, depending on those characteristics. The load will stay on that line from start to finish. Right before the oil is sent to a storage vessel, I’ll taste it to determine which vessel it should go in.

What are you looking for when you taste the oil?

We identify the particular flavor profile of each batch of olives — delicate, fruity, or pungent — and then identify where the oil should be stored initially based on those characteristics. The milling team ends up tasting a lot of oil.

How much oil do you think you taste in the course of a harvest?

I’ve never estimated the amount. But it’s quite a lot. This season we’ll run about 800 truckloads of olives. Every load is set on a particular production line and the resulting oil is tasted. We are currently running five production lines, and each line of oils needs to be identified. Our system is set to alarm the miller at the beginning of each load that the flavor profile needs to be identified before the oil can move to the mill tank room for storage.

What is it like tasting all that olive oil?

It takes about 3.5 hours to run one truckload of olives. During that time, the oil is checked every hour on each line. Each taste is only a small amount. But over the season it amounts to a lot of sample tasting. I really enjoy this aspect of the milling job, because of the importance of selecting the right storage tank and the right profile of each batch of olives. I’m really lucky I enjoy our oil so much.

How do you maintain your ability to taste all that oil, without your sense of taste or smell getting burned out?

I’ve developed a routine over the years. I leave the production line and go off to a secluded area in the mill so I don’t have competing aromas in the air. I also know that early on in the season the oil is going to be intense, and so it’s easy to identify that oil. As the harvest progresses, the flavor profile will change in a fairly predictable way.

What happens to the oil after you taste it?

Every olive varietal and every flavor profile is segregated in a separate storage vessel in our tank room. Later, we’ll blend the oils to get the flavor profile we want for a single varietal or a particular blend of oils. Our new storage facility is all stainless steel and the room is climate controlled to keep the oil at 70 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit year-round. Our tanks are sealed and the oil is nitrogen-blanketed to keep the air off of the stored oil.  These procedures help keep our oil the freshest in the world.

How many hours a day and how many days a week do you put in during the harvest?

Our milling season lasts about 50 days, and our equipment is expected to run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The satisfaction of accomplishing our goals is almost unexplainable for  me. In the off season, our milling team works hard preparing each line for the harvest. It’s exciting to know how much oil you’re expected to run, and how many long hours it’s going to take to get that accomplished.

What’s it like when the harvest is completed?

When the season ends, it happens all at once. You’re working 14 hours a day per shift and you never expect that last load. When it happens, the letdown of the season is very strange. You keep looking for that next truck that never arrives. What a great job to have.

Bon appétit,

Your friends at California Olive Ranch