Rancho Azul y Oro ~ Surviving the Dream

It was announced today by the Yolo County Olive Oil Competition that Rancho Azul y Oro won a Gold Medal for it's Estate Extra Virgin Olive Oil and a Best of Class Medal for our Arbequina Blend, Robust Intensity.  AyO was also awarded a Silver Medal for both its Lemon-Infused Olive Oil and its Orange-Infused Olive Oil. The Yolo County Olive Oil Competition is the second largest olive oil competition in the U.S., second only to the L.A. Cunty Fair Wine and Olive Oil Competition.   Discover California's newest gold for yourself, why not try some of our award-winning olive oil?

It was announced on March 24th that Rancho Azul y Oro won a Silver Medal for its Estate Extra Virgin Olive Oil, and a Gold Medal for it's Orange-Infused Olive oil, which was also awarded Best of Class for Infused Olive Oils and Best of California Flavored Olive Oil.  We were also awarded a Gold Medal for our Smoked Olive Oil. As if that wasn't plenty, today, our Estate Extra Virgin Olive Oil was awarded a Silver Medal from the San Joaquin Valley Olive Oil Competition. Why not reward yourself and discover California's new gold and try our olive oil? Thanks for the recognition, it is all quite an honor.  Now, back to bottling and getting all that farm work done!

Banana-Dark Chocolate Olive-Oil Muffins We were preparing for a tasting of our olive oil today, and as we always do, we create food with our olive oil using recipes that either we create or that we believe will pair well with our oils.  The goal?  To demonstrate how EVOO can be integrated into everyone's daily meals without too much difficulty. On the whole, we were pleased with these muffins, although I will be making a few tweaks in the future, at which time, we'll print up recipe cards, which we always provide with our oils. Here is a picture of the finished product: Banana-Dark Chocolate Olive Oil Muffins Do you have a favorite muffin recipe that you'd like us to try to convert using EVOO?  Let us know!

2016 EVOO We are very pleased to announce that our 2016 olive oil was awarded its extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) certification from the California Olive Oil Council on December 1, 2016.  This year's oil has been identified with strong robust flavors and high astringency, with positive flavor descriptors being identified as artichoke, cinnamon, and green almond.  I know, don't even say it. Receiving our certification is one of the best Christmas presents we could receive and we are off and running, now, for 2017. Happy Holidays to you all!

2016 EVOO Olive harvest began at sunrise on November 5th, 2016 and was our largest harvest.  In order to be certified EVOO, the olives must be picked, sorted, and milled within 24 hours, and then pass a chemical test and then a sensory evaluation in a blind tasting by an expert panel.  Our goal is to get them in and milled within 12 hours. Our olive oil passed its chemical test on November 7th, 2016 and is being prepared to be submitted to the tasting panel for evaluation.  In the meantime, our olio nuovo will be released in the next two weeks, and then the balance of the oil will be allowed to rest and the oil will then be filtered and bottled in January.   This was our largest harvest, and unfortunately, circumstances precluded many family members from participating this year.  Had it not been for the very generous donation of time and effort on the part of our friends, Bing and Karla Seid, we may not have been able to complete this very daunt...

The figurative dust is settling from what has been just an incredible awards season for Azul y Oro -- 13 awards for the olive oil and three awards for the wine.  One should be pleased with results such as those.  We are.  We are also grateful for the bountiful harvest, our crews, the mill, and our family and friends who not only helped on harvest day, but help by being our biggest fans and spreading the word about our product.   We have been asked by numerous other producers how we accomplished this.   An awards season such as we have had also causes introspection and a look at the eight-page goal list that was compiled in January.   What was learned from that review?   First, that half of those goals have been accomplished, so what then?  Stop and enjoy the summer?  No, we added more goals.  W e looked at what did and didn't work and assessed how we can do things better.  Aren't we satisfied with this year's results?  Yes ...

It's been a busy spring at the rancho.  After the dust of harvest clears and the workers leave, the behind-the-scenes people (yours truly) get busy on getting the olive oil certified, and if that occurs, after the oil has settled a bit, the time comes to bottle, label, prep for the olive competitions and hit the ground running.  There have been improvements along the way.  Our labels have been updated and polished a bit and more standardized.  We have learned to use the new label machine -- although, if one were telling the truth, one would say it is not as user-friendly as we had hoped.  We have an updated, hopefully more user-friendly, website.  We were also thrilled to announce that, in March, our products were actually on store shelves at the Cheese Store in Silverlake, CA, just outside Hollywood.  We had a great day meeting the people who work there and their incredibly enthusiastic customers. We continue to develop new products and use our...

There has been a great deal of discussion in the last two days about the "60 Minutes" show on fraudulent olive oil and the Agromafia .  Some of the big name Italian olive oil companies are involved, with possibly 80% of the Italian olive oil being exported to the U.S. being either mislabeled or not 100% olive oil -- let alone EVOO.  U.C. Davis published their findings on tests that they ran in April of 2011 and named the names of companies whose oils were tested.  You can read that report here . So what is a consumer to do?  Well, if you're a U.S. consumer, buy local and look for the California Olive Oil Council (COOC) certification seal.  What does that mean?  International, as well as U.S. standards, require that olive oil undergo a chemical analysis to meet minimum standards in order to be classified "extra virgin."  If those standards are met, that olive oil must be submitted to a tasting panel for sensory evaluation.  The panel consists of ...

In the old days (three or four years ago), there were down times at the ranch, such as summer and winter.  It could be said that it was because the plantings were not so mature and required far less work, which is, in part, true.  Experienced farmers, wine grape growers, and vintners probably know better.  Slowly, it is becoming evident that free time was abundant because we did not know we were supposed to be doing certain things on a regular schedule, such as spraying the vines, olives and lavender (yes, even the lavender) for disease and pests, thinning the shoots and fruit early in the season, regularly testing the grapes approaching harvest, performing regular chemical tests on our wine, adjusting the SO2 level, topping the barrels, then adding inert gas, all the while planning yeast choices for harvest, calculating harvest estimates and ordering barrels for the wine, bottles, labels, and corks for the oil and the wine. With all those lesso...

 It seems as if we've already had a momentous year, getting the EVOO certification, two silver medals, our Processed Food Registration Permit, bottling and labeling all the oil, pruning the vines, racking the 2011 and 2012 wines and keeping those adjusted, updating the rancho website and beginning to get the e-commerce functions up and running.  We are additionally working on promotional materials, and of course, fine-tuning our products so that they are the best we have to offer.  One would expect that one could rest on one's laurels a bit.  However, we've come to the conclusion that there is no laurel resting.   We had a reminder as to how very fast the year is flying by, the cattle left the property today -- literally, for greener pastures.  2013 has been one of the fourth driest years on record in California since the 1880s, and consequently, it was not a bumper year for grass, which feeds many cattle.  Since the entire property, as well ...