Olio Nuovo Makes a Special Holiday Gift

A gift that belongs to the season

Olio Nuovo is the new oil of the harvest. Ours is extra virgin olive oil that we release fresh from the mill, unfiltered, while it still has that vivid, green character we wait all year to taste. We grow the olives and mill the oil here at Frantoio Grove in California.

For somebody choosing a holiday gift, the timing is part of what makes it feel personal. The new oil arrives in the fall, around the time we’re starting to gather for Thanksgiving and the holidays. You’ve thought about somebody while this particular thing is available. It has an “I got this for you” feeling.

I tend to give gifts that way anyway. Something catches my attention and I know exactly who I want to give it to. Sometimes it’s silly. Sometimes it means a great deal to one of us. I don’t always feel compelled to find a gift for every occasion on the calendar, but when I find something that fits a person, I want them to have it.

A bottle of olive oil is an easy thing to bring when you’re going to somebody’s house, much as you might bring wine. The nice part is that they’ll keep reaching for it over the next few weeks. It becomes part of their meals.

The season also puts an honest limit on what we can offer. We harvest once a year. We try to make enough Olio Nuovo to share through the holidays, and I’d much rather have people get a bottle than congratulate ourselves on selling out immediately. Weather, the crop, and how much people buy all affect that window, so we can’t promise it’ll remain available through a particular day.

The current release and ordering details live on our Olio Nuovo page. That’s where to check what’s available for the holiday you have in mind.

Who would you give it to?

I think about the person who gets excited when a favorite crop comes back into season.

For me, being a Gilroy boy, garlic is an easy example. You get used to the garlic that’s been sitting around for ages, then the new stuff arrives at LJB down the street and it’s sweet and punchy and you remember why you love it. For somebody else it might be peaches, or the citrus they wait for every winter.

You don’t need to go to the farmer’s market every week and keep a calendar of when to look forward to each new crop to appreciate fresh olive oil. But if you know somebody who notices those things, who smells a tomato before buying it or tells you where they found particularly good bread, this is a pretty good gift for them.

My friend already liked cooking and knew good olive oil could make a difference. He just hadn’t experienced this level of freshness in an oil. That’s a lovely person to give it to: somebody who’s interested, with something new still ahead of them.

The artwork gives people another way into the bottle. In coffee, there are plenty of artists or musicians in the industry so artist collaborations aren’t anything new or novel. I love that. With olive oil though, the packaging often feels much more formal. We put so much care into what goes inside the bottle; I wanted some of that life on the outside too.

By the time I gave my friend his bottle, we’d been doing the artist labels for a few seasons. His reaction was one of many that made me want to keep going. People were surprised that a bottle of serious olive oil could look like that. It gave them something to be curious about.

So I wouldn’t have a different speech prepared for the home cook, the art lover, and the person who cares about California farms. There’s a lot in this one bottle for each of them to find.

And I don’t expect somebody to learn our whole story before they enjoy it. Finding an oil they like is plenty to start with.

Please open the bottle

“I’m not very good at saving nice things.”

Part of that is excitement. When I get something I want to try, I want to taste it immediately, to put it on every dinner or eat it with every meal. Part of it is that my apartment doesn’t have room for everyday plates and another set of plates waiting for a sufficiently impressive dinner. If I have something nice, it goes where that thing normally goes, and I use it.

It’s much the same with ingredients. There are things I don’t spend money on, but good butter, good cheese, and good olive oil are part of how I like to eat. People who’ve eaten at my house know that. When something’s on the table, nobody needs to be shy about using it.

That’s what I’d want somebody to understand when they receive Olio Nuovo. Open it while it’s fresh. Put it on food you already like. You don’t need to organize an occasion around it.

I also don’t want “use it promptly” to sound as though you’ve been handed a chore or a bottle that’s about to become worthless. I’ve found forgotten Olio Nuovo in my own cupboard much later and still enjoyed it. My kitchen has an unreasonable number of olive oil bottles in it. I’m always tasting other growers’ oils, trying varieties we might plant, opening something new, and losing track of something else.

But I’ve also tasted our older unfiltered oil beside oil we filtered at harvest. The filtered oil has held onto more of its freshness and aroma. An older bottle can still be good food while having lost some of what made the new oil so exciting.

We’ve written more about why Olio Nuovo tastes so fresh and how it changes with time. For a gift, the useful message is simple: enjoy this while it’s at its most expressive.

Keep the bottle capped in a cool, dark cupboard between meals, away from the stove. The California Olive Oil Council’s storage advice explains why light, air, and heat matter. Bringing it to the table is lovely; leaving it on a sunny counter for weeks isn’t doing it any favors.

What to do with it first

Honestly, I’d take a sip.

Pour a little into a glass, warm the glass in your hands, and smell the oil as it warms. Then taste a small amount. A quarter teaspoon is plenty to get started. You don’t have to turn this into a formal tasting.

If sipping oil feels odd, get a piece of good crusty bread and dip it. Load it up enough that you can taste the oil.

After that, I’d make a salad. Good greens, a little vinegar and salt, then a generous pour of Olio Nuovo. Fresh herbs if you have them. You don’t need much else.

We have a customer in Portland who’s told us about serving it at his gathering with friends after Thanksgiving. He has the big family meal first, then gets people together again afterward. By then, everyone’s had plenty of butter and gravy and leftover stuffing, and a big green salad is a welcome sight.

I remember him dressing it up with fruit, cheese, and herbs, though I couldn’t tell you every ingredient from every year. What stuck with me was the pleasure of having something bright and fresh on that table. The salad could still feel festive without being another heavy dish.

Ari at Zingerman’s had some lovely serving ideas when he wrote about our previous harvest’s Olio Nuovo: toast, salads, and simple spaghetti. His write-up is about that particular harvest, but the food makes the point well. You can get a great deal of pleasure from this oil without cooking anything complicated.

If I were adding something to the gift, I’d reach for vinegar or fleur de sel. I like KATZ sparkling wine vinegar when I want something bright that won’t overpower the oil. The Sauvignon Blanc vinegar brings a little more body and sweetness. It depends on what you’re making, but either gives the recipient somewhere easy to begin.

One bottle, a few to share, or a gift set

One bottle is a complete gift.

It’s something I made, something I care about, and something I think the other person will enjoy. I’m comfortable handing that over without adding enough other things to fill a basket.

If you’ve got several people in mind, buying a few bottles or a case makes sense. We have customers who give them to clients, and people who keep bottles ready for the friends they’ll see during the holidays. Giving the same thing to several people doesn’t make it thoughtless when you’ve chosen something you’re pleased to share.

A boxed gift set is a different way to present it. Our gift boxes are hand stamped, with the products nestled in crinkle paper and the box tied with a bow. They travel inside a separate shipping box, so the gift box is what the recipient gets to open after taking off the outer packing.

An ordinary bottle order is wrapped for shipping, with each bottle protected in corrugated paper. It won’t arrive arranged like an open display. That distinction matters if you’re sending something directly and have a particular presentation in mind.

You can browse our olive oil gift sets for the available combinations. Look for a set explicitly named Olio Nuovo if that’s the oil you want to give. The seasonal sets and the sets with our filtered oil are separate items, with their own availability.

The price behind the bottle is mostly the work. California farm labor, milling, bottling, packing orders by hand. Paying people well matters to me. If we can’t do that, I don’t want to be in this business.

For me, that work includes the day I scraped my hand tightening something on the tractor, or came home smelling like kelp extract after spilling a batch on myself. For the person receiving the gift, I hope it mostly means something delicious.

If they become curious about the farm afterward, there’s plenty to see. Our orchard has living roots and plant residue covering the ground. I love being able to walk across that heavy clay soil after rain and find it held together underfoot. Our regenerative farming story goes into more of what we’re doing there. I’d like everybody who buys a bottle to have a chance to visit someday, but they can start with dinner.

Sending it in time to enjoy

For in stock orders, we generally begin processing the next business day. A big release can take a little longer. We leave a bit of space because people sometimes spot an address mistake or want to add something before the package goes out.

If you’re buying ahead of harvest, check the release estimate on the product page. A preorder is tied to an agricultural crop, and rain can change when we’re able to get into the orchard. I don’t want to turn an estimate into a promise the weather gets to break.

For Thanksgiving, Christmas, or a particular dinner, give yourself a few extra days beyond the carrier’s estimate. Holiday shipping gets busy. If timing is tight, ask us before ordering and we’ll tell you what we can do.

We can include a handwritten gift note, and our packing slips don’t show prices. For a couple of different addresses, placing a separate order for each is the easiest route. If you’re arranging a larger group of gifts, get in touch with us about it.

When you’re ready, you can check this year’s Olio Nuovo for the current release and bottle options.

As for the note, I’d keep it short. Tell them it’s the first oil of the season and that you thought they’d like it. Give them an easy place to start, a piece of bread or a bowl of greens.

“The next time you sit down with a friend, that particular evening will happen once. Whatever else you have planned, open the good oil.”