Olives101.com

By Reed Fujii,
LODI - Olive oil production in California is a hot ticket.
About 130 people joined in a two-day class offered Friday and Saturday in Lodi by the University of California, and others had to be turned away, said Dan Flynn, executive director of the UC Davis Olive Center. California olive oil production still [...]

By Laura Kurtzman,
After the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, the University of California, Davis established a research department that led to the flowering of the California wine industry now, it hopes to do the same for olive oil.
The challenges to the emerging industry are significant. They include finding economical ways to produce fine oil, dealing [...]

UC Davis will unveil its new bottled olive oils, made from the 2007 harvest of the campus’s 2,000 olive trees, during a public “launch party.” Also making its debut will be a new UC Davis wine vinegar.
The event is scheduled from 4 to 6 p.m., Wednesday, at the Silo Cafe and Pub on the [...]

Olive experts from the United States, Spain and Italy will teach the latest techniques in growing olives for commercial olive-oil production during an April 18-19 public short-course coordinated by the UC Davis Olive Center.
The course, to be held in Lodi, will begin Friday, April 18, with an update on olive-oil production in the United States [...]

Hoping to do for olives and olive oil what it has done for grapes and wine, the University of California, Davis, today launched the first university-based olive research and education center in North America.
Plans for the new UC Davis Olive Center, which is part of the university’s Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, [...]

“A tree will produce and produce. You can neglect it, abuse it, forget about it, not water it and it’ll still produce olives,” says Dan Flynn, a U.C. Davis scientist.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=885424805320245878

They stand as immovable sentinels of the past. Many of these giant mission olive trees are almost four stories tall and at nearly a century and [...]

UC Davis Olive Oil, Yolo County Agriculture and Marketing Initiative & Slow Food Yolo present a Pre-Harvest Tour and Feast at the Historic Wolfskill Ranch in Winters October 13, 2007 10:30 am
Location: 4334 Putah Creek Road, Winters, CA
Program here (pdf)
Tickets available online here

Thanks Dan for the infos ;o)
By Bill Lindelof,
The fruit of Yolo County olive trees owned by UC Davis and planted nearly 150 years ago by one of Northern California’s early pioneers is finding new customers.
John R. Wolfskill, who worked for $100 a year when he came to California in the 1830s, planted the trees in [...]