For Spacious Skies.....California Olive Production
It didn't take much urging from early reviewers of our book for us to be convinced that our knowledge would be more complete if we visited olive groves and producers in the United States. While olive production in the US is growing and today, groves can be found in Texas and several southeaster states, it is the state of California that is the center of the olive industry "stateside."So it was that we dedicated two weeks to travel to CA in June and visit 10 different olive centers, from small organic groves such as Grumpy Goats in Capay Valley to massive California Olive Ranch near Chico. We traveled up and down the Central Valley and learned about water rights and regulations and innovative milling processes and the diversified wine/oil estates. There we found as we have always found on every continent we have visited, wonderful people happy to share their olive oil knowledge with us. We were so glad we went and you can read about all of this in our newest post.
While we were already out in California, we were lucky enough to be able to take the Sensory Evaluation of Olive Oil Workshop at UC Davis. This four day course showed us how tasters are trained and how a panel's taste responses are honed by repetition and consultation. It was an amazing course - well worth it and now, Rich and I are indeed "CERTIFIED" as having taken the class. Note that we are not certified as tasters or certified as having PASSED the class, but yes, we certainly did take it and enjoyed tasting what felt like close to 500 different oils over the four days.
Apologies for the delay, but getting our book to the publishers at the end of July and then preparing for Fall classes took precedence. We hope better late than never.
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