Harvest is just getting going this year, and it sure has been a heck of a month getting up and running. Our major equipment upgrade - a new decanter that would allow us to nearly double our daily production - had multiple issues upon startup, requiring a last minute scramble to get our old decanter re-installed.

As soon as we were ready to harvest, the atmospheric river came and rained us out of our field for another week. these delays, however, seem to have been a blessing in disguise!

Our fruit - the Frantoio variety - is characteristically bright and spicy with strong flavors of green fruit and fresh cut grass. Having delayed our harvest a bit, we have been rewarded with an oil that remains robust and spicy, but is tremendously balanced, layered with both green and ripe fruit flavors.

As our pickers move through the field, we're seeing variations in ripeness (which is typical) and our oil is delighting us with notes of artichoke, green banana, and pink pepper on the green side, and persimmon, almond, and banana on the riper side.

Check back for chemical analysis.

2020 was another rough year on the Grove. Following a heavy crop and hard pruning, we were expecting a down year, but heavy winds during a light bloom took our crop from light to paltry. There was fruit in the orchard but it was sparse and picking (by hand) was bound to prove futile.

Our saving grace was a call from the organic orchard in the North Bay our trees came from - with the uncertainty from Covid, they were going to have some extra fruit and did we want some? From the grove that sired our trees we were able to bring in and mill about 10 tons of fruit - predominantly Frantoio with about 10% each of the same varieties we have planted for polination (Lecchino and Pendolino.)

The oil is delicious, quite bright and peppery with aromas of green banana and Makrut lime.

After a disappointing previous year, we had a tremendous harvest this year. The trees were dripping with fruit and the fruit set was so heavy we had a hard time giving the trees enough water to keep the fruit at ideal moisture content for milling. Dry fruit can mean a bitter oil, but we managed to get a great deal of fruit quality to balance a very pungent oil.

This is one of our favorite years for oil quality. We taste lots of bright, fresh cut grass and tomato leaf, with banana and citrus fruit qualities balancing it out.

Although this was our largest harvest ever, we were rained out of the field before we were able to pick it all and by the time the field dried up enough to pick again, our fruit was extra ripe and heavy with water - which would have yielded good but less delicious oil so we left it on the trees.