Olives101.com

California suppliers cash in on burgeoning demand.

By Eric Leach,

Rosemarie Fusano was born into the olive oil business in the 1940s San Fernando Valley, where signs along the highway once proclaimed Sylmar the biggest olive-growing area in the world.

Over the next few decades, the industry in the Valley dried up when cheaper vegetable oils and safflower oil came into vogue. At the time, some doctors even thought olive oil was unhealthy.

Now, olive oil is en vogue like never before in the Golden State, where it is being produced by nearly 400 companies and sold to customers who prize it for its taste and health benefits. And Fusano, 60, is still in the business.

She helps meet the demand at her Fusano California Valley Olive Co. in Paso Robles, and she and other producers compare today’s business in California to the early days of the state’s wine industry.

“Some of the big gourmet magazines are still focused on olive oils from overseas,” she said. “Either they are unaware of what is available in California or there isn’t enough panache.”

U.S. domestic sales of olive oil have increased 20 percent in each of the past five years, and the California olive oil industry has grown almost one-third in acreage in the past two years.

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