America's appetite for olive oil ripens
Locals finally told him that Mission olives should be harvested ripe, not green, for oil.
From his tasting room on the hilly outskirts of Oroville, Calif., Jamie Johannson can hear the workers picking his olives. Even when they are too far away for him to hear their voices, he can still detect the wind-chime-like clamor of them at work.
"There's a musical sound when they move their metal ladders," says Mr. Johannson, founder of Lodestar Farms. Visitors make their way to Johannson's grove throughout the year, drawn by the nation's growing fascination with small farms in general and olive oil in particular. While olive oil has been a staple in other countries for eons – used to cook and flavor food, fuel lamps, and anoint the body – Americans' interest is more recent. Travel to the Mediterranean and a resulting enthusiasm for its cuisine created a buzz for olive oil in the last few decades. Food celebrities proclaimed the virtues of EVO – extra-virgin olive oil, the finest, most flavorful oil produced entirely by physical means (now in centrifuges, not presses), without the use of chemicals or excess heat.
Consumption of olive oil in the United States has risen 272 percent since 1991, according to the International Olive Oil Council. By 2002, Americans were consuming a little over a half liter (about a pint) each year – about what the average Greek uses in a week.
Olive Oil Council. By 2002, Americans were consuming a little more than half a liter (about a pint) each year – what the average Greek uses in a week.
Johannson's 20 acres of grizzled trees are laid out in wide, stately avenues nestled into the Sierra Nevada foothills. The grove was established 80 years ago, when Oroville was the epicenter of the nation's olive industry. The trees' pedigree goes back even further, to the olives planted by Franciscan friars at the missions built along California's coast in the 1700s. Hence the name: Mission olives.
Johannson moved to California in 1993, just as a new crop of growers were getting into the olive oil business. These new olive oil producers decided that Italy was the home of world-class olive oil. So they traveled there to study how Italians planted orchards and made oil.
But when Johannson tried to make oil from his own olives – picked and pressed when they were green, as the Tuscans did – it fell flat. Locals finally set him straight: Missions make the best oil when they're harvested ripe, not green, and Oroville's location in the temperate foothills allowed them to be harvested as late as January. "I started to harvest when the olives were fully black," says Johannson, whose extra-virgin Mission oil has since won awards. "It makes a milder, fruitier oil."
Johannson's golden, late-harvest Mission is at one end of the flavor spectrum. At the other end are the green, spicy Tuscan-style oils and the pungent Koroneiki oils from Greece.
"We're just getting started here," says Paul Vossen, a farm adviser from the University of California. "We're starting to develop a knowledge base to distinguish one kind of olive oil from another, to understand what style goes with what kind of food." He says that every good cook should have several kinds of olive oil on hand, much as they have several kinds of vinegar or cheese.
"Those peppery Tuscan oils are a flavor profile all on their own," says Heidi Insalata Krahling, executive chef and owner of Insalata's in San Anselmo, Calif. "They're great finishing oils for roast peppers and white beans, or on a perfectly grilled piece of fish. But their big flavor can fight with dishes that have a lot of spices. The fruitier oils are really my workhorse oils, especially for sautéing."
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