With Southern Oregon establishing it’s reputation for growing grapes, another warm climate crop is starting to take root.

More than 130 acres between Jacksonville and Medford are the beginning of what some hope will be an olive oil industry in the Rogue Valley.

Olive tree Grower Jeff Hoyal has planted more than 86,000 Greek and Spanish olive varieties he believes are well-suited to this area’s weather and soil.

“We have Koriniki, which is a Greek variety, a very peppery oil. We have Arbisona, which is a Spanish variety and is a very sweet oil. And then we have Arbiqina, which is another Spanish variety, which is a very buttery oil. And all three of them are, historically, create the top quality extra virgin oil that, that you’re really looking for,” Olive Tree Grower Jeff Hoyal said.

The Oregon State University extension service in Southern Oregon is also experimenting with 60 trees in a test plot.

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Consumers will face challenges as they learn to differentiate between extra virgin (high-quality) and oil pressed from the pomace of cull olives. All of the oil is expected to move through one market level or another.

Help is on the way. A new California law specifies and adopts international olive oil grades. How that will affect marketing and movement of the growing supply of oil is discussed in a report by two agricultural and resource economists at the University of California, Davis.

Assistant Professor Travis Lybbert and Ph.D. candidate Christopher Gustafson wrote about the law and its effect in the January/February issue of Update, published by the university’s Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics.

They point out that olive oil consumption in the United States has increased 650 percent since 1980. Most of it has been supplied by imports, but with California’s olive oil acreage climbing from 1,000 or two to 25,000, soon foreign supplies will face fierce domestic competition.

While supply volume has exploded, consumer understanding of the various grades of olive oil has lagged behind. The authors of the report believe heightened consumer awareness of the various olive oil standards and grades will bring about changes in the marketing strategies of oil producers. However, they believe that will occur slowly.

They project that increased sophistication by consumers will tend to benefit high-quality producers while impacting producers of lower-quality oils negatively.

For producers of high- quality oil the goal is extra virgin olive oil (EVOO), recognized internationally. Below that designation are virgin, refined and olive-pomace categories. The latter of the three grades established by the International Olive Oil Council (IOOC) results when olive pomace (flesh of the fruit and seed residue) are pressed to extract oil.

Olive-oil consumers in California now have additional label information to help them choose between various quality levels displayed on store shelves. To gain the most from the printed data they will need to understand what the grade standards imply.

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Several olive growers, including Crane Mills in Corning, are starting up new oil olive crops and building processing plants to produce olive oil.

Crane says, “With any new venture people are hopping on board just like we did, but there’s a potential to be over plantings.”

Crane just planted 200 acres of the oil olives, or Spanish Arbequinas.

Processor owner Ray Rogers of Corning Olive Oil Company believes the value of the olive oil he produces will decline as more businesses jump into the oil market.

He says, “It’s going to hurt us, they can sell oil for $18 a gallon, where I can hardly make it for $18 a gallon.”

That’s because picking and producing the oil olives is much cheaper than traditional hand-picked olives.

Oil olives can be mechanically picked for around $30 dollars a ton, Rogers spends close to $500 a ton getting his olives.

Rogers says, “I have mixed emotions about it because they’re planting so many.”

While it could eventually hit the profits of smaller processors like Rogers, the new oil olive growers aren’t reaping the benefits yet.

So far it hasn’t been profitable for Crane Mills, but they also didn’t expect it to be.

And they hope people get choosy about their olive oil, and use only California olive oils, which must meet a much higher standard than imports.

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Officials are scratching their heads as to why this year’s olive crop is the pits. “The crop looked really good early on,” said Doug Compton, assistant commissioner of the Tehama County Agriculture Department. “But then we began hearing reports of poor fruit set from olive growers.”

Across the state, Tehama County appears to be one of the least-affected areas. Compton said southern counties and even Glenn County seem to be harder hit than local orchards.

Jean Miller, Glenn County Agriculture Department assistant commissioner, said she only became aware of the fruit set problem on Thursday.

“Since that time I have been contacting many of the area olive growers, including California Olive Ranch, to gain some understanding of how bad the problem is,” she said. “What I have learned so far is that the damage has affected some areas worse than others, with some orchards not having any problems at all.”

As for the reason, while there are a number of possibilities, officials said it is too early to know if there is one single culprit.

“What we do know,” Compton said, “is that we have a number of factors that could be the cause. Hot weather during the blooming season, unseasonable rains and frosts, all of which can cause poor pollination.”

He explained that for an olive fruit to properly set, the pollen grain has to travel down the flower’s pollen tube to fertilize the fruit.

“If the temperature is too hot with low humidity, the pollination doesn’t occur correctly and growers get no fruit or what we call shot berries, which are tiny fruit that doesn’t develop and eventually falls off the tree,” Compton said.

Miller said that two weeks ago she conducted a workshop in an olive orchard in Glenn County, when someone pointed out that there were very few olives on the tree and that they were very tiny.

“Those where the shot berries Doug was talking about,” Miller said.

Table olive grower Ross Turner, of Corning, said a month ago his bloom looked great and he expected a good crop.

“All that has changed. With the poor pollination we got this year I don’t expect much at this point,” he said.

Compton said that “at this point, it is too soon to know how significant the loss will be. We know that so far the Manzanillo table olive has been hit pretty hard, but it is too early to predict the set of the Sevillano crop. What we do know is that everything is less than expected and that is hard news for growers.”

This is the third year in the last four that the state’s olive crop has been less than expected. Along with this bad news, olive growers have to contend with the high cost of fighting an olive fruit fly infestation and high labor costs. Olives are hand-picked.

Miller said these problems are driving some olive growers to uproot their olive trees and plant other crops.

In Tehama County, olives are the number four tree crop, following walnuts, almonds and prunes in that order.

Olives also are fourth in tree crops in Glenn County, following almonds, walnuts and prunes.

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The state’s strict new olive oil standards have left a bad taste in the mouth of one New York food importer who is arguing in court the rules are unfair, flaunt federal law and are hurting business.

Dennis Kangadis, vice president of New York-based Kangadis Food Inc., also known as The Gourmet Factory, has filed for a temporary injunction in Hartford Superior Court to prevent Department of Consumer Protection from imposing a ban on olive oil containing other kinds of oils and from seizing products that do not comply.

“The Gourmet Factory’s reputation and business relationships have already been harmed by the DCP’s adoption of the state Olive Oil Standards,” Kangadis’ attorney, Brett Boskiewicz of the Hartford-based Robinson & Cole law firm, claims in court documents.

The controversy stems from the differing olive oil standards imposed around the world.

According to court records, Connecticut last year chose to adopt criteria used by the International Olive Oil Council, a 41-member intergovernmental organization that does not include the United States.

The Gourmet Factory follows differing federal guidelines which grade olive oil based on fatty acid content, color, flavor, odor, cloudiness and sediment content.

But Connecticut lawmakers, at the urging of Norwalk-based Sclafani Importers, took a further step by preventing the sale of olive oils that — to cut production costs — are watered down with hazelnut, soy or peanut oils.

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Publishing heiress Nan McEvoy hopes a once-controversial 98-foot-tall windmill on her northern Marin ranch will become an inspiration for farmers and others interested in leaving fossil fuels behind.

“I know there is nothing my mother is prouder of,” said Nion McEvoy, who spoke on his mother’s behalf during a dedication ceremony at the McEvoy Ranch Wednesday morning. “I know that this project was controversial, but I hope that over time people will see it is not as terrible as they might have feared, and the positive aspects of promoting a progressive energy policy will become evident.”

McEvoy had originally planned to build a 246-foot-tall windmill, powerful enough to power and heat the dozen or so buildings and olive oil processing plant on her 552-acre ranch. After neighbors and the Marin Planning Commission balked at the windmill’s size, however, McEvoy proposed a smaller structure, with a 98-foot tower and blades 40 feet in diameter.

The new windmill will provide an average of 225 kilowatts of electricity, enough to meet the ranch’s needs. To heat the ranch, however, contractor Sustainenergy Systems of Inverness is currently installing solar thermal panels throughout the ranch’s buildings.

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“Beyond Extra Virgin,” the largest conference on olive-oil excellence ever held in North America, is designed for chefs, journalists, specialty retailers, food-service management executives, olive-oil producers, sensory scientists and anyone with a serious interest in cooking. Co-sponsored by the UC Davis Olive Center and The Culinary Institute of America, it will include two days at UC Davis and a third day at the institute’s Greystone campus in the Napa Valley.

The term “extra virgin” applies to olive oil that is the natural product of the olive, processed without any heat, solvents or other oils. The grade allows for a wide range of quality, including oil that is bland in flavor. The conference will focus on the top tier of extra virgin quality.

During the three-day conference, participants will be instructed about the critical control points — from harvest to storage — that advance or undermine flavors in extra virgin olive oil. They also will experience how leading chefs, including Paul Bartolotta, John Ash, Deborah Madison and Renato Morisco, are melding the modern with the ancient to highlight and even re-invent the best of these flavors.

The conference will begin at 4 p.m. on Sunday, June 21, with all sessions held in Freeborn Hall. On Tuesday, June 23, the participants will travel by chartered bus to The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone.

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Jan K. Overweel Ltd., which markets the Emma, Casa Italia and Cortina Foods brands and other imported products, was convicted in Toronto in February under the federal Food and Drugs Act, with the Ontario Court of Justice imposing a $40,000 fine plus the forfeit and disposal of over 27,000 litres of seized oil.

The imports in question, which took place between January and May 2006, were found to contain about 50 per cent sunflower oil and “did not meet the prescribed standard for olive oil,” the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said in a release Wednesday.

Federal food regulations require, among other things, that olive oil “shall be the oil obtained from the fruit of the olive tree,” CFIA said.

According to CFIA, the court said the company “should have exercised due diligence to ensure that the product met the prescribed standard.”

“Health-conscious consumers purchase extra virgin olive oil for the health benefits they believe are associated with the product,” CFIA said.

But olive oil can also “easily be diluted or substituted with cheaper oil,” the agency added. “The presence of other oils in olive oil cannot be detected by visual inspection and therefore consumers rely on the labelling.”

Overweel, which promotes its operations under the slogan “We shop the world,” has been in business since 1947, starting as an importer of herring products from Holland and expanding into grocery items, cheeses and specialty cocoa. It operates at Woodbridge, Ont., Port Coquitlam, B.C., Strathmore, Alta. and Montreal.

The company, according to its website, currently imports and markets various brands of extra virgin olive oil from Italy in tins, bottles or by the 190-kg drum.

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Dr Rodney Mailer, from the Australian Oils Research Laboratory, says the European International Olive Council’s standards are too restrictive and treat unique aspects of Australian oils as negative traits.

He says Australian producers shouldn’t be disadvantaged, because their olive oil is different to European oils.

“One of the sterols in olive oil, campesterol, is a little bit higher [in Australian oils],” he says.

“This doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with the oil.

“The varieties we have here just have a bit more than what the [current] standards say they should have.

“In fact, I think it’s a good thing, because it’s a nutritional benefit but we have some trouble trying to export to Europe because of these standards.”

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Since he grew up among Italian farmers in California, Dougherty’s Bella Vista Ranch follows the classic format of Italian agriculture with which he was familiar.

The working cattle ranch includes an olive orchard in the front 20 acres, specialty fruit trees, and producing vegetable and herb gardens.

Dougherty takes pride in his success with items not generally grown in central Texas: almonds, cherries, apricots, apples, asparagus, artichokes, arugula, oriental persimmons, and table grapes. Each spring the ranch’s 1000 plus blackberry bushes become prime territory for pick-it-yourself visitors—followed by red raspberries from June until October.

But his specialty is producing olives. With more than 800 olive trees representing seven different varieties, the ranch produces and bottles fresh pressed olive oil– the first commercial venture of this kind in Texas. It’s not unusual for hundreds of people to visit Bella Vista ranch in a day, with the numbers swelling during berry-picking season.

Planted in 1998, his trees first produced olives in 2001. “I’ve been around trees my whole life and know that harsher soils are really better,” Dougherty says of the caliche (clay) soil. “Besides, olive trees take very little water and are almost bird and bug proof.” Since recorded history documents olive trees dating back thousands of years, he knows that once an olive tree starts to produce, it will continue for a long time.

With modern equipment in the on-site frantoio (building with presses), The Texas Olive Oil Company (www.texasoliveoil.com) produces a very high quality oil that is ready for delivery to the public as soon as it has settled. The company also bottles and distributes custom blended fresh California and Italian olive oils and manufactures jams and sauces (using fresh fruits and herbs grown in the ranch gardens), and pure Castile soap, made with virgin olive oil.

Tours of the orchards and frantoio are available, as well as olive oil and wine tastings.

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Gold medals were awarded to an additional seven of the Sonoma-based company’s extra virgin olive oils including Ascolano, Koroneiki, and Sonoma Valley Blend along with Best of Class medals going to both Sevillano and Mission.

Gold was also awarded to Marquesa and Lunigiana Estate Certified Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oils. Silver Medals were awarded to Arbequina and Italian Blend Extra Virgin Olive Oils, along with Jalapeno Oil at this important competition.

All of the award-winning olive oils can be sampled and purchased at The Olive Press Tasting Room and retail shop, located on Highway 121 in Carneros adjacent to Jacuzzi Family Vineyards at 24724 Highway 121/Arnold Dr, Sonoma, CA.

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Walk down the snack aisle of a local grocery store and you’ll find the usual canisters of peanuts, bags of chips and jars of salsa. If Lindsay Olives has its way, you’ll see their cans of olives as well.

Owned by Bell-Carter Foods Inc. of Lafayette, Lindsay Olives is in the process of trying to change its image.

The top U.S. producer of olives wants to maintain its classic feel, yet gear up to target a new generation of olive eaters.

“We understand there’s a heavy tradition with Lindsay Olives, but we also understand there’s a whole new market we can tap into,” said Ken Wienholz, chief executive of Bell-Carter.

Wienholz arrived three years ago and is the first nonfamily CEO. He believes there’s a way to make both long-standing and new customers happy.

“We want to give our brand a look that will not only connect with the older generation that has fond memories with us, but also excite a new generation of customers into looking at olives as a great snack food,” he said.

The company isn’t taking the move lightly. About $4.5 million is going to be spent on the makeover.

The new labels are bright red. At grocery stores such as FoodMaxx, large displays of the cans are set up to draw in new customers.

“As kids, a lot of us remember putting the olives on our fingers and eating them off one by one,” said Robin Robinson, vice president of marketing the company. “We want Lindsay Olives relevant to today’s shoppers.”

Domestically, there are two primary players in the table olive business. Lindsay Olives and Musco Family Olive Co. in Tracy. Bell-Carter comprises roughly 65 percent of the U.S. industry for black olives, with Musco taking up the majority of the remainder, according to Adin Hester, president of Olive Growers Association.

Bell-Carter had revenues of $200 million in 2008, according to Gale Group, which researches private and public companies. More than 90 percent of that comes from the olives.

Lafayette is where the executives and the day-to-day operations are, but the olives themselves are processed in Corning. About 10 million cases, or 60,000 tons, a year are produced there.

One of the newest product lines are olive snack packs, to encourage customers to eat them straight out of the can with pull tops.

“I think they’re plans to expand the product space and move into snack packs is good, because who carries a can opener with them,” Hester said.

As a whole, the olive industry is doing strong.

Because olive trees are self-pollinating, if the weather is not right, entire crops can be lost. In 2006, a late spring storm caused a “total crop failure.”

“This year we’re looking very good, and we have a strong bloom,” Hester said.

The biggest competition for olives and its black olive brands doesn’t come from mother nature, but from imports. Those bought in stores are still let by domestic olives, but those used by restaurants are often imports.

“Often times I’ll go into a restaurant and ask if the olives are from here, and they say, ‘Of course’ ” Hester said. “I then say prove it, and when you read the label you see it came from somewhere else.”

Hester says he wishes that Bell-Carter and Musco would be a bit less confrontational and do a little more marketing together to try and make people aware of the quality we have here.

For now, Bell-Carter feels the future will be a time where Lindsay Olives makes its splash in the market.

“Five years from now, we hope to have olives reach customers that never considered them before,” Wienholz said. “There’s a lot of opportunity out there that we hope we can reach.”

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This fall during the olive harvest in Italy, Dan McCarthy plans to have about 180 bottles of freshly pressed olive oil shipped by air from the 50-acre Tuscan estate of his former Queen Anne customers, Enzo Schiano and Claire Beliard.

To cover the airfreight, McCarthy & Schiering Wine Merchants will add about $6 to the regular $27 price of a 500-milliliter bottle of Poggio la Noce.

Last year, customers descended on the retailer’s 120 bottles of the “olio nuovo” — new oil — like lovers of French wine greet Beaujolais Nouveau.

Sales of high-end olive oil have slowed, but some Seattleites remain willing and able to pay up for a fresh bottle to drizzle on salads, fresh vegetables and pasta.

Schiano and Beliard, who bought the Italian acreage in 1999 after making millions in marketing and business development at Microsoft, convinced McCarthy that olive oil could be worth a higher price when they brought some Poggio la Noce to Seattle a few years ago.

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University of California Cooperative Extension farm advisor Paul Vossen, an olive oil expert, says the state’s olive oil has a promising future if word of its many benefits is effectively shared with consumers.

“It’s not just an ordinary fat,” says Mr. Vossen. “Good olive oil imparts delicious, subtle flavors to foods, its antioxidants can neutralize free radicals in the body and it is ‘greener’ than other vegetable oils because it requires no heat or chemical extraction.”

Mr. Vossen says California olive oil is well worth the premium cost. The challenge will be convincing consumers that they should spend a little extra for the high-quality, healthful and tasty oils that California’s farmers produce, he says.

“Really good olive oil is something fairly new,” says Mr. Vossen. “It may take time for consumers to discover and appreciate the difference.”

For thousands of years, olive oil has been a valued cooking oil, lamp oil and medicinal oil. Countries like Spain, Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Portugal and Syria are the world’s main olive oil producers. In many areas, the use of ancient equipment and traditional cultural practices continue to this day.

Over the years, Mr. Vossen has traveled to olive producing areas all over the world — Spain, Italy, France, Portugal, Greece, Morocco, Australia, Chile and Argentina — to observe olive oil production systems. He found that old-world olives are primarily produced on a very large scale on unirrigated, poor quality farmland. Much of the fruit is harvested from the ground and rarely stored carefully before processing.

California growers use modern farming methods, harvest mechanically or by hand so the fruit never touches the ground, and have replaced the smelly mats and wooden vats used in old-world production with stainless steel spinners and decanters. The outcome is olive oil that tastes as spicy, peppery and pungent as the olives from which it was made.

However, because low-quality European and Middle Eastern oil is so common, many consumers have come to think of its off-flavor as standard fare, he says.

“The California olive oil industry is capturing the fresh fruit flavor of the olive,” Mr. Vossen says. “In clear bottles, the oil’s color ranges from moss to forest green, unlike the straw- to beige-colored oils imported from other countries. The aroma has notes of grass, green tea and green fruit.”

Currently, California is not a big player in the world olive oil market, according to statistics from the International Olive Council. U.S. olive oil producers represent about 0.5 percent of the 23.3 million acres in olive oil production worldwide. Meanwhile, U.S. consumers use about 8 percent of the world’s olive oil and consumption of olive oil in the United States is on the rise. Per capita olive oil consumption grew 428 percent from 1990 to 2005.

Nearly all of the olive oil used in the United States is imported from other counties. In 2004-05, imported olive oil represented 99.3 percent of the total consumed. If Americans were to choose exclusively domestic oil, the 20,000 acres of olive trees currently planted for oil would have to swell to 300,000 acres. If demand continues to rise, there would be a need for even more.

“I don’t think we’ll ever have enough olives to meet U.S. demand for olive oil, but this demonstrates the tremendous market potential for olive oil in this country,” says Mr. Vossen.

About 25 percent the California olive oil industry is comprised of artisan producers with relatively small farms. The yields are fairly low, and it’s difficult and expensive to harvest. The rest of California olive oil is produced by farmers using super-high-density plantings that can be mechanically harvested. Almost all California olive oil is fresher and better-tasting than imported olive oils commonly found on supermarket shelves, according to Mr. Vossen.

“Many of the familiar supermarket olive oils are poor quality,” says Mr. Vossen. “Most have been sitting far too long and are fermented or rancid.”

The assertion on a bottle of olive oil that it is “extra virgin” means very little, he says. There is no U.S. law that enforces an “extra virgin” standard. He suggests that California standards be developed that are not based on the antiquated European standards.

Mr. Vossen believes the key to boosting sales of California olive oil is to get people to taste it. “They need to know how fantastic it really is,” he says.

However, good California olive oil isn’t cheap. Super premium olive oils run from $10 to $30 for a 750 milliliter bottle. But even in today’s challenging economy, Mr. Vossen believes there is a potential market for super premium California olive oil.

“If you have to cook at home instead of eating out to save money, you can minimize the sacrifice by splurging on a really good olive oil,” he says.

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This unique event, scheduled for June 21 to 23, will be held at the University of California at Davis and the California campus of The Culinary Institute of America.

Conference highlights include extensive culinary demos and tastings, informative lectures and memorable meals.

Click here for more information and to register.

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