Sonoma County olive harvest ends with a drizzle

Tim Bucher is up to his elbows in olive oil at Healdsburg’s Trattore Farm. He spent last week communally milling the small batches brought in by people with a tree or two, and will deliver the finished oil to them today.

This week he will bottle the olio nuovo and aged California Tuscan blend milled from olives grown on his property, sold under the Dry Creek Olive Co. label. By the first week in December, it will be available to shoppers who visit Trattore’s Dry Creek Road tasting room.

It marks the end of an early Sonoma County harvest that was ended by last week’s rain.

Bucher, a grape grower, got involved with olives after inspecting his land and finding 180-year-old olive trees. His original intent had been to raze them to plant vineyards, but instead he decided to learn more about olives.

He traveled to Italy to gather information about olive trees and olive oil production and ordered a Pieralisi olive mill to foster the creation of his olive oils. The first batch was milled eight years ago.

Trattore Farms now has two kinds of mills - a 7-ton granite stone that offers milder oil from a gentler process, and a more efficient hammer mill that creates bolder flavors by crushing the fruit more vigorously. Both produce oil that adheres to California’s strict standards for extra virgin olive oil.

It must be mechanically, not chemically, extracted. The oleic acid must be lower than .05 percent, which is more stringent than the .08 percent European, and the oil must never be higher than 82 degrees Fahrenheit. The lower production heat gives California olive oil a higher smoke point, 600 degrees.

In addition to producing its own extra virgin olive oils, Trattore Farms offers custom milling to local businesses. For the past seven years, it also has offered two to three community milling days for backyard growers who bring their yield in buckets as small as five gallons or bins that weigh up to 800 pounds. Each delivery is weighed as it comes in, and each owner receives back a percentage of the total harvest in gold-green oil.

Over the years, about 250 people have participated in community milling days.

The olives are best when milled within 24 hours of picking, and Trattore Farm employees carefully inspect each load for olive flies, rot and fungus. They reject substandard olives.

Those participating in community milling days pay 80 cents a pound for the milling, and pick up their olive oil at the tasting room. The company provides food-grade plastic containers at a nominal cost.

Because of the drought, this year’s harvest was six weeks early in Sonoma County and the yield was 30 to 40 percent lower for dry-farmed trees. Trattore Farms’ yield was normal because its trees were irrigated with well water.

“Olives are thin this year, and milling is earlier than normal,” said Michelle Robson, Trattore Farms’ business partner. In addition to the early harvest, the dry fruit and lowered yield promise a robust, intense flavor to the extra virgin olive oil produced.

Olives are harvested when they are green to black to purple. According to Robson, the best balance comes from two-toned fruit. The greener they are the higher the polyphenols are and the more pungent and peppery the oil.

California Mission olives are now considered native to California, as they naturalized here after the Spanish missionaries planted olives the length of California, said Robson.

Trattore Farm Tasting Room, at 4791 Dry Creek Road, is open 11 a.m.-4:30 p.m. daily, and will be closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas and Boxing Day. Learn more about milling and its wine, olive oil and vinegar at trattorefarms.com.

Contact Healdsburg Towns Correspondent Ann Carranza?at Healdsburg.Towns@gmail.com.