Rancho Azul y Oro ~ Surviving the Dream

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...

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...

Bud break on the table grapes When last the ranchers drove off into the sunset, the native grasses were still gray in color and dormancy still dominated the landscape. A mere two weeks later and the temperatures have soared into the 80s, and upon arising yesterday, the occupants were greeted with bud break on the table grapes and on the olive trees. While it gladdens one's heart to see such demonstrations of the resiliency of Springtime, it also recalls to mind last year, when bud break occurred on the table grapes and olives at the end of March, and on April 8th and 9th, snow and hail decimated the newly budded plants and the crop for the year. The joyous weather and hopeful optimism of Spring could cause one to skip happily down the sidewalk, but history reminds one that happily skipping must be tempered with caution, since Mother Nature appears to be the world's great mischief maker. Be that as it may, after all the skipping down the sidewalk was completed, thes...

We thought it would never happen, but finally -- finally -- the picking, crushing and pressing of the 2010 crop of olives has occurred. Harvest of everything that grows is done. Over. And while it would have been nice two months ago so that all those rainstorms could have been enjoyed in front of a roaring fire with a good glass of wine, rather than out in the cold drizzle picking olives, in the end, it is finally the end. And now that it is the end, that means it is also the beginning. 2011 was launched with the pruning and retying of all those vines while simultaneously pressing the last of the 2010 olives. The Pest Control Manager, the Carl Spackler-wannabe, has been out in force, planning on new ways to get the upper hand on everything that dares to vex him -- gophers, squirrels, mice, rats, voles -- please note, this author is not included on that list. The olive trees have also all been pruned and are ready to go for 2011. The Picking and Pressing Team were getting a little ...

In the end, all turned out well at Thanksgiving. Michelle and Brian contributed another table to the barn, so now, we can seat 25 comfortably. Outstanding in the Field, watch out, here we come! In retrospect, though, we probably tried to accomplish too much, though. We prepared the feast for 25 in some of the coldest weather this area has seen in a long, long time, using both ovens, and making many trips back and forth to the barn. We did have a great time trying new wines, enjoying some new recipes, and meeting new friends and catching up with old friends. Stuart just rocked his portion of the feast, the rotisserie turkey and the smoked turkey. This was a time we wanted leftovers galore and there just weren't many. Michelle's parmesan wheel appetizers were wonderful and the grape jelly meatball appetizers were a hit. The numerous desserts were amazing. The next morning, was beautiful and sunny, so bright and early, after feeding the little people, Michelle and I were...

There are mounds of supplies in our front hallway waiting to be transported up to our ranch for Thanksgiving -- everything from paper lanterns to papertowels to peanut butter cups -- and the real shopping has not yet begun, nor has the real cooking. It is hard to imagine how all of these items combined will turn into a warm, welcoming feast by next Thursday. Then, of course, there are the wildcards that will be thrown in, which are inherent to living on a remote ranch. Will someone hit a phone pole in Carmel, 150 miles away, and our electricity go out? Will the well go out? Will the store have actually reserved our two turkeys, as promised? Will people be wondering why they have traveled to the middle of nowhere for dinner? It's going to be in the 20s at night; will the people staying in the Wine Barn Bunk House be warm enough? Added to this are manmade variables, how will the smoked turkey taste? Will the stuffing be more moist this year? Will I have enough drippings for...

I've been mulling over what can be said about our first experience picking and pressing our olives. One always reads travelogues in which happy people are picking olives on sunny days in the Italian countryside, followed by a crush, and entire towns celebrating with a feast, in order to dip crusty bread in the olio nuovo, browsing from table to table to share every family's personal oil. To begin our saga on a positive note, we learned a lot -- always important. In hindsight, we now know our day was too ambitious. There were only two pickers and two trees, which yielded 40 quarts of olives, which took five hours to pick, bringing us to 4:30-ish in the afternoon, and it was getting dark. The average citizen might have called it a day at that point, gone in, warmed up by the fire with a glass of wine. Of course, we are not your average citizens. We were driven by a belief that we would just crush these olives, and in a few short hours, be sitting at the bar in our processin...

It seems like it was a year spent waiting. Spring and bud break seemed like it would never come. Summer seemed to come in starts and stops. We waited all year for a heat that really only materialized on occasions when we wished not to have to deal with wilting heat; the rest of the summer was 26% below our normal temperatures. We waited for ripening of the grapes. We waited and waited. Finally, with the olive harvest upon us, we could not wait any longer. The Zinfandel was harvested October 4. The brix sneaked up on us and came in at an astounding 28.5, a whopping 17.8% alcohol. It is destined to accompany chocolate as a late harvest wine. It stormed most of that week of primary fermentation, but it provided a perfect backdrop to decorate for our Harvest Celebration with the family, which we celebrated our traditional third weekend of October and which will be covered in a separate post, but one of the highlights of the weekend was that the barn was officially renamed The Win...