A Third of The Best American Olive Oils Come from This California Region

Part of our con­tin­u­ing spe­cial cov­er­age of the 2021 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

Despite a chal­leng­ing crop year in which inclement weather and labor short­ages ham­pered the har­vest across California, pro­duc­ers from the state enjoyed a solid per­for­mance at the 2021 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

Thirty-six pro­duc­ers from 20 coun­ties com­bined to win 62 awards at the world’s most pres­ti­gious olive oil qual­ity com­pe­ti­tion. While pro­duc­ers were spread across the state, the high­est con­cen­tra­tion came from the Central Coast region.

Comprising San Luis Obispo County, Monterey County and Santa Cruz County, pro­duc­ers from the Central Coast earned 16 Gold Awards and five Silver Awards at the NYIOOC. Combined, pro­duc­ers from the region, which is slightly larger than Slovenia, earned one-third of all awards won by U.S. pro­duc­ers at the com­pe­ti­tion.

Winning pro­duc­ers attrib­uted a com­bi­na­tion of the region’s Mediterranean cli­mate, unique soils and cul­ture of cama­raderie for their suc­cess.

“The rea­son our area pro­duces such superb oils is partly due to the per­fect Mediterranean cli­mate the Central Coast enjoys, but also because we focus on indus­try-lead­ing prac­tices to grow, har­vest and store our oils,” Lynn Israelit, the co-owner of Templeton-based Spanish Oaks Ranch, told Olive Oil Times.

“We have a long-stand­ing his­tory of local grower orga­ni­za­tions in our area which focus on edu­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion,” she added. ​“San Luis Obispo County pro­duc­ers learn about best prac­tices together and sup­port one another in achiev­ing them.”

Israelit and her hus­band, Sam, earned two Gold Awards and a Silver Award at the 2021 NYIOOC. The cou­ple has entered the com­pe­ti­tion every year since they began pro­duc­ing olive oil in 2016 and enjoy the oppor­tu­nity to be judged along­side the best extra vir­gin olive oils in the world.

“Winning Gold and Silver Awards at the NYIOOC makes a big dif­fer­ence to our cus­tomers,” Israelit said. ​“It lets them know that we pro­duce supe­rior oils that are inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized and gives them con­fi­dence that the prod­uct they are buy­ing is some of the best olive oil in the world.

Despite the advan­tages of the cli­mate and soil, Israelit added that part of what sep­a­rates her oils from oth­ers is the amount of work that goes into the har­vest.

“We are small pro­duc­ers who pay metic­u­lous atten­tion to every detail of the pro­duc­tion of our oil: tim­ing our har­vest per­fectly, hand-pick­ing our fruit to avoid bruis­ing and get­ting our olives from the tree to the mill within two to three hours for max­i­mum fla­vor and fresh­ness,” she said. ​“It’s hard work, but it makes a dif­fer­ence.”

Less than an hour north of Spanish Oaks Ranch, in the sin­gle-road town of San Miguel, the pro­duc­ers behind Rancho Azul y Oro Olive Farm cel­e­brated win­ning a Gold Award after enter­ing the NYIOOC for the first time this year.

“We felt truly hon­ored [to win this Gold Award] because we’ve always con­sid­ered the win­ners of this com­pe­ti­tion to be the best of the best,” co-owner Kathryn Keeler Olive Oil Times.

She also attrib­uted the suc­cess of Central Coast pro­duc­ers to the area’s micro­cli­mate and placed plenty of empha­sis on the soil.

“The rea­son that the region is so impor­tant is the unique grow­ing con­di­tions,” Keeler said. ​“One of the com­mon­al­i­ties with most of the award-win­ning olive grow­ers in the Central Coast region is that we are on the east­ern side of the coastal range, a bit inland, so we are hot­ter and drier.”

“Our soils in this region are what is con­sid­ered cal­care­ous soil,” she added, which per­fect for grow­ing oil-pro­duc­ing olives.

Beyond the cli­mate and the soil, Keeler added that the region’s olive grow­ers have excel­lent sup­port from local millers and pro­ducer orga­ni­za­tions, which also helps them to reach their full pro­duc­tion poten­tial.

“Combined with the extra­or­di­nary soils in this region, as well as the opti­mal grow­ing con­di­tions, we also have two extra­or­di­nary mills,” Keeler said. ​“Both of the gen­tle­men who run these mills know that they are work­ing with extra­or­di­nary olives and grow­ers who truly care about their olives.”

“They not only go to great lengths to make cer­tain that all of the grow­ers are edu­cated about new advance­ments, but they also truly help all of the olive grow­ers in the Central Coast region to shine,” she added.

One of these millers is Greg Traynor of 43 Ranch, who pre­vi­ously won a Gold Award at the 2020 NYIOOC.

He esti­mates that small pro­duc­ers across the Central Coast pro­duced about 20,000 gal­lons (100,000 liters) in 2020, down from 40,000 gal­lons (200,000 liters) in 2019. However, he added that these fig­ures did not include the coun­ties’ super high-den­sity pro­duc­ers.

The Olive Oil Commission of California, which keeps track of pro­duc­tion fig­ures for any­one who pro­duc­ers more than 5,000 gal­lons per year, did not respond to the request for com­ment about the region’s exact pro­duc­tion fig­ures.

Traynor told Olive Oil Times that he attrib­utes three fac­tors to the suc­cess of the Central Coasts pro­duc­ers, includ­ing the avail­abil­ity of expe­ri­enced con­sul­tants and insti­tu­tions to help farm­ers, a highly involved pro­ducer asso­ci­a­tion and the cli­mate.

“Central Coast Extra Virgin as a group meets about six times per year and shares best prac­tices and infor­ma­tion,” Traynor said. ​“These are highly ded­i­cated grow­ers that strive to make world-class extra vir­gin olive oil. They have banded together and police each other to ensure that the high­est farm­ing, stor­age, pack­ag­ing and label­ing prac­tices are fol­lowed.”

Traynor added that the Central Coast is unique due to pro­nounced diur­nal tem­per­a­ture swings, with hot days and night­time tem­per­a­tures reach­ing around 13 ºC.

“We believe that this cool­ing influ­ence on our olives allows for a longer grow­ing sea­son and pro­duces oils with greater com­plex­ity,” he said. ​“When most of the rest of the state is fin­ished with their har­vest and milling by the end of October, the Central Coast is har­vest­ing and pro­duc­ing oil until the end of December every year.”

Back in San Miguel, Shaana Rahman, the co-owner of Boccabella Farms, cel­e­brated her company’s sec­ond suc­cess­ful out­ing at the NYIOOC, earn­ing three Gold Awards.

While the Central Coast pro­vides plenty of advan­tages for olive grow­ers to pro­duce high-qual­ity oils, she empha­sized that the dif­fer­ence between good oils and award-win­ning oils lies in the work of the farmer.

“Truly great olive oil starts with best farm­ing prac­tices,” she told Olive Oil Times. ​“Our focus is first on the health of our orchard and trees, using regen­er­a­tive farm­ing tech­niques to ensure that the olives we grow are the best.”

“In the spring dur­ing bloom and fruit set, we pay care­ful atten­tion to what our trees need to pro­duce the high­est qual­ity olives,” she added. ​“When we are ready to har­vest, we are highly selec­tive about which olives get har­vested and pressed into oil. We hand­pick our olives so that they stay pris­tine until they arrive at the mill.”

For Rahman, this care­ful micro­man­age­ment of the pro­duc­tion process is nec­es­sary to ensure only the best olives are trans­formed into oils, which are then care­fully blended.

“For our vari­etal blends, we are method­i­cal in tast­ing and eval­u­at­ing the olive oil from each vari­etal and then spend hours, days and some­times weeks bal­anc­ing the vari­etals to craft some­thing spe­cial,” she said.

Back in Templeton, Karen Tallent, the pro­ducer behind The Groves on 41, also attrib­uted a com­bi­na­tion of the Central Coast’s cli­mate and the work in the groves and mill to her suc­cess, and the region’s at large.

“I think we all endeavor to pro­duce the finest oils pos­si­ble,” she said. ​“Our soils and weather are usu­ally on our side, too.”

“We like to har­vest a lit­tle early, so we hold off water­ing dur­ing some of the most demand­ing days, closer to har­vest, with the goal of a lit­tle more intense fla­vor,” Tallent added. ​“This ear­lier har­vest is a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult to pull from the trees, so our yields are a lit­tle lighter, but oh, does the fla­vor and polyphe­nol count make up for this”

This year, Tallent and the rest of her team at The Groves on 41 earned a Gold Award for their medium blend. It is the fourth award the com­pany has earned in five years of com­pet­ing at the NYIOOC.

“We’re a small, local pro­ducer and enjoy our local [cus­tomer] base,” Tallent said. ​“They have come to know our farm­ing oper­a­tions and olive oils, so when we receive a big award like this one, it is a really big deal for the com­mu­nity. We all cel­e­brate.”