The Very Italian Problem at California Olive Ranch

Some of you might have been in Washington with me in December 2012 for a hear­ing at the United States International Trade Commission (USITC) on the con­di­tions of com­pe­ti­tion between American olive oil pro­duc­ers and major for­eign sup­pli­ers.

Olive Oil Times was just a few years into cov­er­ing indus­try news, and the USITC hear­ings felt like a big deal at the time – a court­room drama pit­ting upstart American pro­duc­ers against old-guard importers.

The main pro­tag­o­nist was California Olive Ranch (COR), which had been lob­by­ing for an ​“even play­ing field” with European pro­duc­ers who enjoyed, COR and oth­ers argued, unfair advan­tages, includ­ing gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies. At the same time, they skirted qual­ity stan­dards and label­ing rules.

“Once the U.S. olive oil indus­try is allowed to com­pete in a mar­ket fairly based on price and qual­ity,” COR vice pres­i­dent Adam Englehardt said at the pro­ceed­ings, ​“con­sumers will be able to make informed pur­chas­ing deci­sions based on reli­able labels and stan­dards.”

More than 95 per­cent of the olive oil Americans con­sume is imported. That trade imbal­ance, Englehardt argued, ​“would be expected if the U.S. was inca­pable of pro­duc­ing olive oil in large quan­ti­ties.” But COR was expe­ri­enc­ing explo­sive growth at the time – buy­ing land and mak­ing top-dol­lar deals with farm­ers as they worked their way onto the shelves of American gro­cery stores.

The hear­ing came on the heels of a ground­break­ing UC Davis report, dubi­ously financed in part by California pro­duc­ers, that found more imported olive oils to be mis­la­beled than domes­tic ones. Then came a book, Extra Virginity by Tom Mueller, that revealed the dark side of the olive oil busi­ness.

Mainstream news whipped their read­ers into a frenzy with sen­sa­tional head­lines decry­ing olive oil fraud in the Old World, and COR was fly­ing high – wav­ing its California flag when con­sumer mis­trust and Buy American sen­ti­ment were at their peak.

Then real­ity set in.

Another ener­getic upstart, Boundary Bend, flew in from Australia, set up shop in the Golden State and started pay­ing farm­ers even more than COR had been. European firms expanded their oper­a­tions in the Central Valley. And erratic weather, droughts and fires intro­duced ele­ments of uncer­tainty into COR’s neat, high-den­sity rows of young Arbequina plants.

I was sur­prised when we reported in 2012 that COR was nego­ti­at­ing to buy a brand of Italian olive oil, Lucini. I chalked it up to a strat­egy by the com­pany to broaden the dis­tri­b­u­tion of its home­grown oils to spe­cialty stores where Lucini was pre­sum­ably stronger.

COR’s CEO at the time was Gregg Kelley, a for­mer Silicon Valley exec­u­tive who knew how to raise cash – and he did. With new investors to appease and the com­pa­ny’s orig­i­nal Spanish back­ers, the pres­sure to keep up the fre­netic growth must have led to the next move.

“Our key chal­lenge is sup­ply,” Kelley said in 2015, shortly after the Lucini acqui­si­tion. ​“We have enough land and resources here in California to sat­isfy the present demand,” he told Olive Oil Times. ​“You’ve got to remem­ber that we’re oper­at­ing with a view to the long term.”

COR’s need for con­tin­ued growth and the real­iza­tion that California alone could­n’t sat­isfy much of America’s 350,000-ton thirst for olive oil was what led Kelley’s team to South American and European sup­pli­ers – those dreaded imported oils that COR and its lob­by­ists spent so much time vil­i­fy­ing a few years ear­lier.

“We started by putting California on the map with COR,” Kelley told us in 2017, ​“and now we hope to bring atten­tion to Argentina.” COR may have wanted to raise the pro­file of Argentinian pro­duc­ers, but not enough for a shoutout on the label.

In 2018, COR unveiled its ​“Destination Series” in the brand’s rec­og­niz­able pack­ag­ing. Kelley must have been chan­nel­ing his inner Cupertino when he okayed the slo­gan ​“Grown Globally, Crafted in California” that appeared in rel­a­tively small let­ter­ing under the ​“California” umbrella.

It’s clas­sic ​“if you can’t beat ​’em, join ​’em.” Suddenly, COR was a ben­e­fi­ciary of the sub­si­dies they bemoaned. And for all their talk of truth­ful labels, many accused the brand of sport­ing one of the most decep­tive labels in town.

Italy can relate.

Since for­ever, Italian olive oils have enjoyed a hard-earned rep­u­ta­tion as the best on earth. The trou­ble has always been that there’s very lit­tle to go around. Italians con­sume more than the coun­try pro­duces. How have they man­aged to export a half-mil­lion tons to dis­tant shores every year?

Like ​“Crafted in California,” there was ​“Product of Italy,” the slam-dunk sell­ing point good enough to land Italian-blessed (if not pro­duced) olive oils in every store and nearly every kitchen in the world.

Oils from Spain, Morocco, Greece, and Tunisia were mas­ter­fully blended and pack­aged in bot­tles and tins with Italian brand names and images, and they were declared Products of Italy. Most of the olive oil that truly was Italian never left The Boot.

Then things started to change. Spain grew tired of basi­cally devot­ing a third of its coun­try to a prof­it­less com­mod­ity and began efforts to fly its own flag, estab­lish brands and add value. And Italian farm­ers started express­ing unease with prod­ucts claim­ing to be Italian when they weren’t.

The ​“Made in Italy” cam­paign began sham­ing com­pa­nies that sought to deceive con­sumers, and new rules were writ­ten to force bot­tlers to be more trans­par­ent about the ori­gins of oils in Europe and beyond.

And that’s what’s hap­pen­ing now in California.

New leg­is­la­tion, AB-535, under debate, would pro­hibit the use of ​“California olive oil,” ​“California olives,” or other sim­i­lar terms in brand names and pack­ag­ing not pro­duced from California-grown olives.

“This is in response to the grow­ing deval­u­a­tion of California extra vir­gin olive oil by California Olive Ranch’s prod­ucts that cyn­i­cally and with false rep­re­sen­ta­tions carry the name California mar­queed across their label to give con­sumers the impres­sion the olive oil is from California,” Alan Hilburg, the founder of the recently-formed California Coalition for Truth in Olive Oil Labeling, told Olive Oil Times.

But COR sees it dif­fer­ently. ​“The olive oil labels that AB-535 reg­u­lates are not mis­lead­ing when they con­spic­u­ously iden­tify their product’s region of ori­gin,” the com­pa­ny’s new CEO, Michael Fox, told Olive Oil Times. But if COR really wanted to be clear about the ori­gin, why not cre­ate a sep­a­rate brand for them, like its Lucini line?

In their 2019/20 mem­ber­ship agree­ment, the California Olive Oil Council announced a new rule: ​“If use of ​‘California’ in any phrase such as com­pany name, brand name, or other word or group of words, or images that iden­tify California on the label of any oil sold by the mem­ber, then 100 [per­cent] of the fruit to pro­duce the oil must come solely from the state of California.”

That made COR inel­i­gi­ble for mem­ber­ship in the group. A spokesper­son for the com­pany said they had no inten­tion of rejoin­ing the COOC any­way.

The writ­ing is on the wall. But the real prob­lem here isn’t that peo­ple can’t tell if an oil is made in California or else­where from the label. The prob­lem is that they care.

Whether an EVOO is made in Italy, California, Tunisia or Slovenia should­n’t be the most impor­tant fac­tor in buy­ing deci­sions. Sure, it’s nice to see the ori­gin with­out word­play and decep­tion, but what mat­ters is: Is it any good?

High-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil is crafted in dozens of coun­tries world­wide, and pro­duc­ers of excel­lence, wher­ever they are, deserve your busi­ness.

The issue is that peo­ple don’t know how to deter­mine qual­ity inde­pen­dently, so they rely on cryp­tic infor­ma­tion on labels that fol­low few rules.

Crafted in California is another entry in a long list of mean­ing­less mar­ket­ing terms, like Product of Italy and cold-pressed.

In a per­fect world, we’d all know how good EVOO should taste, and nation­al­ism would­n’t have much of a role in our buy­ing deci­sions. Until then, this is how it will go.