California’s Olive Oil Revival

MARYSVILLE, Calif. —  In the normal course of events, Nan McEvoy and Michael Henwood never would have crossed paths. She is a wealthy newspaper heiress and doyenne of San Francisco society. He is a farmer of modest means with hands scarred by a lifetime of manual labor.

But the heiress and the farmer share a single passion: olive oil. McEvoy makes it from trees she imported to her Petaluma farm from Tuscany. Henwood harvests the fruit from a 100-year-old orchard that stood abandoned for decades on his father’s Marysville ranch.

Both love the trees for their history, which has been entwined with human existence since the dove brought Noah an olive branch to show the flood that destroyed humanity had receded. Both believe that California orchards will eventually produce oils as fine as any pressed in Italy.

The two are members of a growing band of entrepreneurs determined to make California’s olive oils as well-known as its wines. They dream of a time when good restaurants will offer lists of the state’s best olive oils, for dipping bread or drizzling on foods, that will be identified by region and variety, like wines.

California’s boutique olive oil industry was born in the wine country of Napa and Sonoma less than a decade ago. Ken Stutz, president of the California Olive Oil Council and himself a producer of gourmet oils, estimates that retail sales of the gourmet oils were more than $7 million last year. Those sales accounted for about 40% of the state’s retail sales of olive oil, with the rest of the oil being made from table-olive rejects, and sold in bulk to restaurants.

But what started as a labor of love among the well-heeled is showing promise of becoming the state’s next big gourmet export, says Paul Vossen, an agricultural consultant with UC Davis.

“I think there is going to be a tremendous growth to it,” Vossen says. “There will be a premium paid for California-produced olive oil.”

Ten years ago, there were perhaps three California-label fine olive oils made in small batches. Today there are more than 50, pressed or extracted in more than 14 mills.

Many sell for prices competitive with fine regional olive oils imported from Italy, with an average retail price of about $30 for a 25.4-ounce bottle. But some of the California oils, such as B.R. Cohn Sonoma Estate, sell for $50 for 17 ounces in gourmet shops.

Most are labeled extra-virgin, although there are no regulations to govern what can or can’t claim such status in California. Extra-virgin oils are cold-pressed--which means that only water, not heat or chemicals, is used to separate pulp from oil, preferably within 24 hours of harvesting. Green or gold, cloudy or clear, their tastes can range from sharp and peppery to buttery and sweet. The best always smell and taste of fresh olives.

California Has Right Conditions

California is the only state in the union with the soil and climate conditions to raise olives commercially. But for most of this century, its trees have been devoted to producing green fruit that is chemically ripened, pitted and stuffed into cans. The state produces 11% of the world’s table olives on about 40,000 acres of trees, most of them in Tulare County.

California produces just 0.1% of the world’s olive oil. Only about 1,000 acres are now planted with trees used exclusively to produce oil, and they are producing about 123,000 gallons of extra-virgin oil annually, Vossen says.

UC Davis has planted six experimental sites to determine which varieties grow here, and is researching ways to lower production costs. The high cost of land in California, and the high cost of paying laborers to hand-pick olives, forces producers to charge high prices for their oils.

California olive oil production will remain little more than a hobby, says Louise Ferguson, another UC Davis olive expert, until producers are willing to develop mechanical harvesting, produce more than just top-of-the-line extra-virgin oils and invest in marketing.

“In Spain, the average person consumes 25 pounds of olive oil a year. Here, the average person consumes a couple of tablespoons. We have to somehow increase consumption in America,” Ferguson says. “The producers have to create a cachet that will attract Joe Six-Pack.”

Undaunted by economics, would-be oil makers have imported thousands of young trees from Spain and Italy in recent years. Those trees will start producing fruit in three to five years. Producers also are reclaiming thousands of neglected trees. UC Davis estimates that there are about 2,000 acres of mature trees not yet being harvested.

Like grape growers before them, says Darrell Corti of Corti Bros. Foods in Sacramento, California’s olive oil producers are reviving an art that was practiced here in the last century and then abandoned.

“The reason there are olive trees in California is to make olive oil,” Corti says.

They were introduced to the state by the same Spanish missionaries who planted wine grapes in the 18th century. The padres used the oil for sacramental purposes, then for bartering. After the missions were secularized by the Mexican government, farmers imported hundreds of varieties from Europe and planted them across the state. By 1880, there was a booming oil market here.

Olive trees lost their lure for California farmers when cheap vegetable oil began to flood the American market around 1900. Thousands of trees were dug up or forgotten.

It was just too expensive to hand-pick olives, and bland vegetable oils appealed more to the American palate. Desperate growers turned to producing table olives to survive.

In the last decade, however, olive oil consumption has risen steadily among increasingly health-conscious American consumers. Olive oil is a cholesterol-free, mono-unsaturated fat. Such fats tend to lower levels of LDL cholesterol, so-called bad cholesterol, in the blood. (Elevated levels of LDL-cholesterol are associated with heart disease.)

Also, the trees are easy to grow organically, and no chemicals are needed to extract the oil.

In 1996-97, olive oil sales in the United States rose 31% over 1995-96 sales. The United States imports about 33 million gallons of olive oil annually, most of it from Italy and Spain.

“Californians looked around and said: Why does this only have to come from Italy?” Corti says. “We can produce good olive oil here.”

Producers have learned much in the short time they have been making the varietal oils, says former Chez Panisse chef Catherine Brandel, now an instructor at the Culinary Institute of America’s Napa Valley campus.

“The biggest problem with the California oils is that some of the best are just too expensive,” Brandel says. “We don’t use them on the teaching floor because of that.”

First to try making fine oil were vintners, many of whom had trees on their property. High land prices and the long lead time between planting and harvesting fruit suitable for pressing made it hard for any but the very rich to start from scratch as olive farmers.

“The California olive oil market is where the California fine wine market was in 1966, when there were few vineyards and few good wines made here,” Corti says. Corti Bros. produces its own extra-virgin oil and markets 18 others--eight of them California labels.

The producers have been on a steep learning curve--turning to Spain and Italy for advice on pruning, irrigation, fertilization, cultivation, pressing and bottling. Results have been wildly uneven.

Corti says some of the California oil already is as good as some of the finest made in Europe.

“And I’ve given some to European tasters who tried it and thought we were trying to poison them,” he says.

Producers have formed the California Olive Oil Council in an effort to set standards. The organization, which started with a handful of enthusiasts, now has 300 members.

The council awards extra-virgin status to oils that have been chemically tested for acidity, and blind tested by a tasting panel. Some 28 California labels now bear the council’s seal, says Patricia Barragh, a spokeswoman for the association.

Charles Schetter planted 225 olive trees around his Pacific Palisades home in 1992. This year, he sold his first commercial oil, Dodici Giardini Extra Virgin Olive Oil. It is the first Southern California extra-virgin to earn the Olive Oil Council’s extra-virgin certification, Schetter says proudly.

“Once you start picking for oil, you become maniacal,” says the business executive. He hauls his olives all the way to Napa the day they are harvested, to ensure a good press.

“It was a little bit like having a baby. At the end of a couple of hours, the first oil starts to come out and suddenly, this beautiful straw-yellow oil starts to flow, and you just get goose bumps,” he says. He doesn’t know if his oil-making will ever turn a profit, Schetter says, “but I’m planning to buy more land and plant more trees.”

Other oils are harvested from trees in the Central Valley, around Paso Robles and in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.

Some producers, like McEvoy, are millionaires drawn to the almost mythical heritage of the world’s oldest manufactured oil.

Others, like Henwood, are business people. Still others are vintners who see oil as a natural complement to their primary product, wine.

“There are so many wineries out there, and consumers are trying to figure out which wine to buy,” Vossen says. “If you have some excellent olive oil, the consumer might think your wine is good too, so selling the oil becomes a way to sell more wine.”

Guiding a visitor around the rolling hills of her farm, where 11,000 young trees are tended by an army of gardeners led by an Italian consultant who flies in several times a year, McEvoy explains that her multimillion-dollar investment in olive oil began as an accident.

The largest stockholder in the San Francisco Chronicle, the newspaper her grandfather founded, McEvoy decided in her 70s to buy a rural retreat for herself and her grandchildren.

Only after she bought 550 acres in Marin County in 1991, McEvoy says, did she discover that the property’s agricultural zoning required her to farm the land before she could renovate any of its dilapidated structures.

Cattle ranching was too hard, McEvoy says. Vineyards were too common.

“I didn’t want to be the 5,900th person to put grapes in the ground. Everybody has done grapes. I just find making oil very exciting. I love the trees, I think they’re beautiful. And it is a happy day when you finally press the oil and taste it and find that you have made something fine,” McEvoy says.

She declines to say how much she has invested in her project so far, although an assistant says she spent $300,000 on her state-of-the-art Italian oil press, which extracts the oil through centrifugal force. But she says she wants to make it profitable, both to show that she can do it, and to make it more likely that her only son, Nion, will keep the business going after she dies.

“I’m in this for the long term,” says the 79-year-old McEvoy. An eight-ounce bottle of her sharp, peppery McEvoy Ranch extra-virgin retails for about $15.

Relearning an Age-Old Process

Sitting on a broken irrigation pipe in his still seriously overgrown orchard, Henwood says it took him 20 years to figure out what to do with his trees.

A settler from the East Coast first planted them in the rolling hills outside Marysville in 1880. Twice in this century, the orchard was abandoned. When Henwood’s family bought the property in 1976, none of the 4,500 trees--some more than 20 feet tall--had been harvested since 1968.

“I started thinking about those olives then,” he recalls. “I tried to make oil once, but I didn’t know what I was doing. The press blew up in my face.”

For nearly two decades, Henwood let the fruit fall on the ground and rot. Gradually, he could distinguish one tree from the other, and discovered that he had a half-dozen varieties of French, Italian and Spanish olives. Some trees had been grafted decades ago, and actually bore two varieties that ripened at different times.

A few years ago, with his children grown, the 52-year-old Henwood decided to try his hand at oil-making once more. In 1996, he tracked down a copy of the State Board of Horticulture’s annual report for 1890, searching for clues to the origin of his trees. In it, he found a trove of practical advice on how to harvest and press olives.

“I basically followed their suggestions,” Henwood says. “They really knew how to produce a fine oil.”

Henwood and his wife, Peggy, press the oil within 24 hours of the olives’ harvest. They made 650 gallons this year and have sold all but 150 gallons of it. His finest oil, a golden liquid called Henwood Estate, sells for $18.95 retail for a 17-ounce bottle.

Henwood says he loves tramping through his still unruly orchard.

“Look around out here--at the dragonflies, the flowers, the crickets, the birds,” he says. “We can capture a little bit of that in the bottle too, a little bit of feel for the land. You can get attached to the creator out here. The trees are an enduring symbol of everlasting life.”

In Sonoma County, landscaper Jeff Allen speaks of the trees with equal reverence.

Allen’s hillside, at the moment, is a tangle of acacias, firs and oaks that are choking hundreds of mission and manzanilla olive trees. By fall, he says, he will have freed the trees, cut back the undergrowth, put in a press and opened a tasting room to tourists.

“We’re doing olives because olives are romance, love, peace. They are a good food. I’m a naturalist and I’m not into chemicals. The grapes are grown by spraying chemicals everywhere. You can raise olives organically, without leveling hillsides or tearing out oak trees.”