To find out more about the competition or check out other award winners, take a look at L.A. International Extra Virgin Olive Oil Competition. Or if you’d rather see the award winning olive oils in person, you can see all the colorful bottles displayed at the Los Angeles County Fair September 4-October 3, 2010.

For now however, I think I’ll crack open a bottle of wine, get some good bread, and enjoy dipping  it in our gold medal oil!

I love to host olive oil tastings for people not familiar with California olive oil. It’s wonderful to watch people’s expressions as they taste different styles of oils and realize that olive oil can vary as much as different varieties of wine or coffee. Many of these first-timers also appreciate how bad the olive oil they’ve previously been using tastes.

Are you new to California olive oil? Then here’s four facts about California olive oil you ought to know:

1) Not all olive oil is extra-virgin olive oil–even if it’s labeled ‘extra virgin.’ Unfortunately, this is a consequence of lax labeling laws in the United States. Basically, with the exception of olive oil sold in California, Connecticut, New York, and Oregon, any olive oil can be sold as ’extra virgin’ in the U.S., even if it’s not. This fraud is especially true of imported olive oils. Buyer beware!

2) Extra virgin olive oil is high quality oil. True extra virgin olive oil is cold-pressed. That means it is processed without chemicals or heat. It must also meet acidity requirements and undergo taste-testing by a certified tasting panel to rule-out taste defects.

3) True extra virgin olive oil is expensive to produce and buy. Is it any wonder that it’s big business for olive oil producers to sell inferior oils with fraudulent labeling?

4) California olive oil is an emerging industry. I like to compare it to the California wine industry forty years ago. I predict in the next ten years more and more consumers will be buying our high quality olive oil as production and marketing increases. The numbers bear this out. Over 12,000 acres of super high-density olives (the main commercial production method) have been planted since 1999. That’s a lot of olives!

Of course, there’s so much more to understanding olive oil, and I’ll tackle those topics in a later post. But for now, try some California olive oil. I think you’ll be impressed!

Hand Harvesting Leccino Olives

I just returned from a lovely weekend harvesting our Leccino olives. The air was crisp, a bracing breeze blew, and the remnants of  a storm scattered clouds across the sky; it felt a lot like Fall, the perfect weather for the approaching Thanksgiving holiday, but maybe a little later than we wanted to harvest olives. Farming is a balancing act, however, pitting the dictates of nature against the availability of labor: walnut harvest stretched longer than planned due to some early season rainfall. The baby olive trees also needed to go into the ground before it became too cold. Thus the Leccino harvest was thrust third in line.

Which has implications for taste. Early harvest olives are greener, containing more of those wonderful antioxidants called polyphenols. Later harvest olives are generally smoother in taste, less bitter than pungent early season fruit, but also containing less polyphenols. Knowing when to pick is an art: balancing taste against the olive’s oil and polyphenol content. And of course, not all olives mature at the same rate, even on the same tree.

The Mandarins are Almost Ripe

The kids and I spent a lovely Fall day at the farm yesterday, soaking up the beautiful autumnal colors and the cooler weather. Walnut harvest is finally finished, and now we can turn in earnest to our next seasonal crop: organic satsuma mandarins.

Many of the little oranges have already started to turn color with just the smallest hint of green left. Next week we’ll ship out our first batches to River Dog Farm, which distributes our organic mandarins to various community supported agriculture operations in the Bay Area. Although not as sweet as they’ll be in December, the mandarins are already delicious. The kids and the dogs couldn’t stop eating them.

Baby Olive Trees Waiting to be Planted

The mandarins aren’t the only action at the farm these days. The men are planting two acres of olive trees. We’re expanding beyond the traditional Tuscan varieties to several Spanish varieties that I learned about from Paul Vossen, Cooperative Extension’s resident olive expert. The trees won’t come into production for three years or so, but I can’t help feel excited. California olive oil is on the upswing, and as you know, we’re already producing gold medal-winning extra virgin olive oil. With new varieties to experiment with, we should be able to make some fantastic blends.

The olives are turning early. We normally harvest our Leccino-variety olive trees in mid-November, but something in this summer’s weather pattern has nudged the olive harvest nearly a month early. For a farming family like ours, that spells harvesting trouble. Walnuts, which are our main crop, traditionally take most of October to harvest, which means the olives will have to wait on the trees until our workers are freed up to pick them. Waiting on the trees, however, can result in a mellower and less pungent olive oil. If you’re like me and love the strong, fruity flavor of California extra-virgin olive oil, you can see why waiting  might not be the best option. I guess yours truly might be out there picking herself! Maybe I can get the kids to help…

Getting ready to plant

Here’s a quick look at the field where we’ll be planting two more acres of olive trees in November. In addition to our favorite olive oil variety, Leccino, we’ll be planting the Spanish-variety Picual and Italian-variety Ascolano. I can’t wait for the new oils!