- We are here in California Olive Ranch,
the biggest producer of
olive oil in the country.
We're gonna find out how
they are mainstreaming
the production of olive oil,
to make it more consistent,
and widely available for everyday use.
So how does California olive farming
differ from Italy, Spain?
- Spain produces roughly
half the world's olive oil.
Most of Spain, Italy,
those kind of markets,
are still actually either hand-harvested,
or shaken on to the ground
and harvested that way.
We're all about catching the
fruit before it hits the dirt,
processing it as fast as
we can get it to the mill,
and also harvesting it at the right time.
- How do you know when
they're ready to be harvested?
- Around September we start
a fruit-sampling program,
and we will send a team
out weekly into the fields,
and they'll pull samples
from different blocks,
and they'll start tracking the maturity.
We track the maturity by two things.
One is color, and also
the second is wet fat.
So we will test an olive
and test how much fat is
actually in the olive.
If you were to grab an
olive today and squeeze it,
you can see the juice in it
and some of the oil that comes out.
- [Katie] Oh my gosh!
- [Matt] You'll see some
with different colors.
The green will be a little bit harder
and not have quite as much oil.
As maturity comes, the
olive will turn purple.
- I've never had an olive
that's not been brined.
- [Matt] So try it.
- And I love olives,
mainly for their salty briny factor.
I gotta do it
Oh my gosh! (Matt laughing)
Oh my gosh! It's so bitter!
- [Matt] I warned ya.
- [Katie] So, this is a harvester.
- [Matt] It's designed to pick olives.
(harvester rumbling)
- This is unbelievable.
This is like, I couldn't have pictured
what this would entail.
Where are these olives headed?
- [Matt] This is actually on
its way to the mill right now.
- What are we going to be
doing here at the mill?
- We're actually gonna
follow the entire process,
from fruit receipt, all
the way through extraction.
This machine here can run
anywhere between 60-100
tons of material every hour.
We're hand-sorting any material
that's got a greater bulk
density than the olive
that could have possibly made it through.
The fruit that we just
watched go up the conveyor
is coming into this hopper.
This is the mill.
Right here we're feeding the fruit in,
and that's breaking up the
entire olive, pit, everything.
- Whoa! It just hits you in the face.
- Yes.
- Olive oil.
- This is mechanical agitation.
When this process is
working very very well,
that's where you're going to
start see the oil separation.
If you put your hand on here, you can feel
we're operating at very
very very low temperatures.
- So you're cold-pressing.
- This is cold-pressing.
- What are some of the
other methods of extraction?
- You have chemical extraction,
which you typically don't see in most --
- You don't want to do that.
- You don't want to do that.
You can't make extra virgin olive oil.
Other types, you would
actually, these jackets would be
as hot as 100-120 degrees Celsius.
From here, we're gonna go down
and we'll take a look at the decanter.
As you can see, here's where the first
extraction point of the oil is.
If you notice, it looks
a little bit different
than what you get in your bottle.
- [Katie] Yes.
- Much more cloudy, it's not as clean.
Right here, all we're
trying to do is get the oil,
and we want a little bit of the water
so that we know we're extracting
as much oil as we can.
- What do you do with all the pomace?
- Right now, all of our pomace,
it gets taken to a feed
company, it's solar dried,
and it gets blended in as
a cattle-feed supplement.
These are the high-speed separators.
And what these guys are
doing is they're separating
the suspended solids and
some of the moisture.
Essentially what we're doing
is we're spinning these
at twice the speed as the decanter.
And as you can see, the
oil here is much more clear
than the oil that we had there.
This oil in particular is Arbequina.
First thing that we're gonna do
is we're gonna cover the cup,
and we want to bring
the oil to temperature.
- It smells green, if that makes sense.
- No, that is actually a descriptor.
- Um, oh. Oh.
- Yeah, see, so you're already a pro.
And then go ahead and aspirate that.
(sucking)
Those polyphenols not only help with
a lot of the health
attributes of olive oil,
but it also helps with storage.
So the higher the polyphenol count,
the more shelf-stable
that oil will actually be
throughout the life.
- Oh my gosh.
This is the largest tank I have ever seen.
- This is actually the
largest bulk storage facility
for olive oil in the world.
- I really had no idea
how huge of a process it really is,
extracting oil from olives.
I was picturing a little
crushing, a little straining,
you know, into bottles, done.
- No.
In here, we've got two bottling lines.
- Can we talk a little bit
about olive oil grading.
You're making extra virgin
cold-pressed olive oil here.
What's the difference between that
and a bottle that you see
that just says "olive oil"?
- We've got three different types of oil.
Extra virgin being the
premium quality olive oil,
then you've got virgin, which
is the next lowest grade,
then you've got lampante, or crude,
and you've also got anything
that's just labeled as olive oil.
If you see that on the
restaurant menu, or on a bottle,
you really don't have security
of what is in that bottle.
- That is, wow. That is a
valuable piece of information.
- Absolutely.
- This is something that
we should talk about.
Most people, I think, think that olive oil
is this indefinite, sitting
on a shelf situation.
But it's highly perishable.
- Absolutely.
- You should be looking for --
- Oh, absolutely.
- An expiration date. A harvest date.
That's a good sign of freshness?
- Absolutely. Absolutely.
This is one of the key portions
of ensuring that you're
getting what you're paying for.
- Right.
- Anybody can slap a pretty
front label on a bottle.
- Yeah.
- But luckily, in California,
all of us are under the same regulations
and ensure that we're being
transparent to our customers.
- Is there a reason for the green bottle?
- Absolutely.
The darker the bottle, typically,
the better UV resistance
it's going to have.
- So you don't want to take your olive oil
that you purchased, and pour it into
a cute little clear carafe.
- Absolutely not.
- Sitting on your counter.
- Absolutely.
- It's in that bottle for a reason.
- Absolutely.
- Keep it in that bottle.
- Yes.
Keep it away from light,
in a pantry cupboard, kitchen cupboard.
You can keep it ... I know
temperatures fluctuate at home,
but somewhere around that 70 degree mark.
Keep it out of direct light.
Don't keep it next to the stove.
And as good-looking as this bottle is,
don't put it in the window sill.
- I have to find another
spot for my olive oil.
It's been a great day.
Thank you so much for having me
and taking me through your facility.
I learned a tremendous amount.
It's been great.
