Olives101.com

By Sean Janssen, The fortunes of Californian olive growers are mixed this year. In Jamestown, grower Leslie Hurst said her Hurst Ranch Feeds & Fencing crop looks to be following a statewide trend of light tonnage as weather has taken its toll on this year’s crop. The California Farm Bureau Federation Food and Farm News [...]

By PJ Bremier, “I’ve got 38 of the most wonderful olive trees and they produce tremendously,” Jim Simon says gleefully as he looks forward to his annual olive-pressing party in November. That’s when Simon, owner of the Building Supply Center in Point Reyes Station, and his wife, Linda, spread out a festive Tuscan feast and [...]

Kapiti olive oil scooped gold for the 4th in a row at the New Zealand Olive Gold Awards held in Wellington. One of the three Raumati and Te Horo growers, Helen Walshaw, said hot days and cool nights on Kapiti Coast helped enhance the robust fruity flavour of the oil. Kapiti Olives sends the fruit [...]

Hand-picking can cost growers more than half of their gross returns By Hank Shaw, A clutch of olive growers stood around a machine that looked like a mobile, padded skateboard ramp attached to a conveyor and armed with a massive pair of grippers. The machine’s grippers grabbed the trunk of an olive tree and began [...]

By Alastair Bland, At Bernardo Winery, one of the oldest olive oil producers in California, oil flow has come to a standstill. While the Rancho Bernardo company has historically produced 300 to 400 gallons of olive oil per year from its 1200 trees, the olive fruit fly, an invasive pest that’s native to Mediterranean Europe [...]

By Mohammed Zaatari, With the start of the autumn olive-picking season in Lebanon, farmers in the South flocked to their olive groves Monday in order to gather the fruit and ensure provisions for the upcoming year. In the village of Tanbourit near Sidon, Umm Abdo Sawma expressed satisfaction over this year’s crop. “We have a [...]

By Greg Stiles, Photo Bob Pennell, Will olives be the successor to pears and grapes? One Rogue Valley farm has decided to test the market. What appears to be a massive new vineyard between Bellinger Lane and old Jacksonville Highway isn’t really a vineyard at all. The 140-acre apron, once part of the Clancy Orchard [...]

By Dan Bryant, Mechanical harvesting research in California olives during the 2007 season documented greater efficiency with hedgerows over traditional trees, according to Louise Ferguson, University of California, Davis Extension specialist in pomology. Ferguson explained the 2007 trial results and plans for the 2008 harvest research during a Central California olive day at Exeter recently. [...]

By Ben Maclennan, “A fresh but rich, rounded aroma, full of nuances of fresh salad leaves and nuts,” “The nuttiness is carried through to the palate with an appealingly rich mouth feel… the gentle bitterness and piquancy linger on, leaving a very pleasant aftertaste.” the judges said. These were the qualities that won the laurels [...]

Australia is becoming a dumping ground for low-grade olive oil, with no controls on cheap imitations coming in from Europe, experts. Consumer demand for extra virgin olive oil, known to be a “healthy fat”, is soaring in Australia, which has attracted hungry European manufacturers. But some extra virgin olive oil sold here – the majority [...]

By Geoff Johnson, Lucero Olive Oil does just about everything in-house, right down to the label designs. By the end of October, the company will be able to add milling to that list. Using the third Westfalia brand separator to be built in the United States, Lucero will be able to improve the quality of [...]

Beginning Jan. 1, that bottle in the supermarket labeled “extra virgin olive oil” will need to meet international standards because of a new state law enacted by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this week. California law has long protected consumers against unscrupulous dealers selling imitation or blended oils as olive oil. However, said state Sen. Patricia Wiggins, [...]

By Chef Nino, There is probably nothing more breathtaking than seeing and participating in olive oil production from the tree to the bottle. Miles of terraced hillsides are meticulously cultivated with the finest olive trees in the world. Olive trees can reach heights of 50 feet and often live for 500-600 years. The oldest living [...]

By Leslie White, FEARS growers may have had to rip out a widely planted variety of olives due to poor oil yields appear to have subsided. In 2000, olive growers were worried the manzanillo variety would disappoint growers who had planted it as an oil producer. However, latest figures indicate the mass removal of the [...]

By Dan Bryant, Olive psyllid, a serious pest of olives in Mediterranean locales, has been identified on landscape olive trees in Southern California and may pose a threat to the state’s olive industry, according to a University of California, Riverside research entomologist. “Psyllids are some of the most fecund insects I have worked with,” he [...]