Rancho Azul y Oro ~ Surviving the Dream

AyO's 2018 olive harvest began at sunrise on Saturday, November 3, 2018.  While much of the world and California's olive market is suffering from a poor olive crop this year, for whatever reason, that is not the case here.  This should have been our alternate producing year (I was looking forward to a year which included some time off), but even with our ten largest trees not producing, we will eclipse last  year's production.  Of course, the worrier in me is thinking, "OMG, how many olives are we going to have in our big production year, next year???" 😱 We are so fortunate to not only have family and friends and neighbors help us with the sorting, but since olives must be milled within 24 hours to begin the EVOO certification process in the U.S., we do hire crews to come in to pick the olives, so between the crews and the sorters, in our minds, the entire pick was going to get done in one day.  We were even tracking the bins real-time. Our mill...

 We know.  We are very bad on posting updates on our blog, but updates and recipes are posted on our Facebook page daily (https://www.facebook.com/ranchoazulyoro/), and by daily, we mean daily, as well as Instagram and Twitter. So the question remains, what have we been doing?  We started the year attempting to expand to deal with our largest olive harvest ever.  It takes time to get our oils in for EVOO certification, formulation time for the flavored oils, working on approved labels to meet the new Food Management Act, as well as creating our other products, marketing, bottling, as well as all the exterior farm work, pruning of the grapevines, pruning a couple hundred olive trees, racking all of our wines, getting all the olive oil in for competition -- the list is endless.  With two people working on the farm, something usually suffers in attempting to check off all of those items on the To Do List.   Despite resolutions to get out of the b...

You might be looking at the above picture and thinking, "Wow, look at that, Gold, Gold, Gold, Best of Class, Best of California." But we are reviewing our 2016 vintage and thinking, "How can we improve?  How can we do this better?"  What do we hope to achieve? For one, we hope to spread the word about our oils and how they can be used daily.  We can emphatically say that they are quality oils.  We work to get every detail right, from growing to harvesting, to selection of our mill, to formulating, to labels, to bottling, and then growing that enthusiasm about using olive oil daily and encouraging our family and fans to spread the word. One of the glaring areas of improvement as the creator of our flavored oils is that one silver medal.  If you know us, you'll know that silver is better than bronze, but we want this oil to have a gold medal -- not because we want medals, but because we want to offer the absolute best that can be offered.  This o...

How NOT to Store your EVOO I was recently asked by a friend what the best way to store olive oil is.  Of course, my eyes wandered over to the sight above, the numerous bottles of EVOO filling our counter top.  Pretending I was not seeing what was across from me, I proceeded to provide her with the following information about what can diminish the quality of the olive oil: LIGHT:  Keep your olive oil away from light (natural or otherwise).  Store in a dark cabinet or closet to prevent exposure;  You will notice that in the worst case scenario above, the olive oil is directly in the light. HEAT :  Keep your olive oil away from any source of heat.   Again, you will notice that in the worst case scenario above, the olive oil is directly next to the stove. COLD:   Do not refrigerate or freeze. AIR :  Seal your bottles of olive oil tightly.  Do not store your oil with pourers left in the bottle.  Air can get in even mor...

Can You See Our Vision or Does Smoke Get in Your Eyes? In the olive oil business, we are always looking for innovative ways olive oil can be used, which leads to creative thinking as to what type of olive oil to create in the first place.  Many producers offer the basics, an EVOO, a citrus olive oil, and an herbed olive oil. A few blog posts ago, I quoted George Patton, who said, "If everybody is thinking alike, then someone isn't thinking." We are one of the smallest olive oil producers amidst a sea of large olive oil producers, so we need to distinguish ourselves from the rest of the producers, try harder, work faster, and visualize concepts others have not yet tried.  Many times, customers ask what can be made with our oils.  We provide suggestions on our Facebook Page  as well under "Mealtime Inspiration" on our blog page, but there are times when some just do not understand our concept. Such is the case with our smoked olive oil.  We beg...

We're pleased to share that Rancho Azul y Oro has been honored with three medals in the Napa Valley Olive Oil Competition: A Silver Medal for our Estate Extra Virgin Olive Oil, a Silver Medal for our Orange-Infused Olive Oil, and a Bronze Medal for our Lemon-Infused Olive Oil. With this announcement comes the end of our competition year, a full-court press to finish bottling and labeling, taking advantage of every opportunity to market and share the oil with you (Translation: Buy Olive Oil). This stage also causes us to review and reflect upon how we can improve things next year, call it our New Year's in May: Avoid rookie mistakes:  Review established procedures each year and follow them to avoid errors we made when we were newbies that shouldn't be happening.  Most mistakes happen when we're in a hurry and there is a price to be paid for haste. Refine and Rework:  Crafting recipes to infuse olive oil is rocket science, combined with art, as are many bus...

We got word late last week that we received four awards from the Central Coast Olive Oil Competition.  We were awarded a Silver Medal for our Estate Extra Virgin Olive Oil, a Silver Medal for our Lemon-Infused Olive Oil, a Bronze Medal for our Orange-Infused Olive Oil, and a Bronze Medal for our Smoked Olive Oil. We are attempting, ourselves, to make sense out of the inconsistencies between the different judging panels.  The O/C member of our team reviews results with the plan of doing things better each year, and scrutinizes every fact provided but just cannot reconcile the results.  Some might suggest we ought to just celebrate the 12 awards we've received this year, with an additional two Best of Class Awards, but yet, we are left SOH (shaking our heads), as they say.  There are producers who submitted and did not win awards, so we are thrilled that, on the whole, all of our oils are award-winning. So, what mountain is left to scale this year?  One of the...