Phew! After a whirlwind few days of touring, tasting, drinking and conversing, I’m glad to be sitting at a computer, alone, in my apartment! On Friday night, my Mom and Dad arrived, and the next night my brother and sister-in-law, Kurt and Masha, got here. The whole family had come in from Chicago for their California-Tour-of-a-Lifetime hosted by yours truly.

It was an amazing weekend full of laughter, chatter, exploration and sharing…I think it’s pretty safe to say that it was a success! As an aside, there are many more fotos on my flickr site which is listed in the links column. It takes forever to upload fotos to blogger!

Saturday, September 30th

My Mom and Dad and I started out Saturday at the McEvoy Ranch in Petaluma where a delicious Tuscan-style olive oil is produced. We’d signed up for their popular $20 tour a few months ago and I was eagerly awaiting learning about their oil. The ranch itself is located on the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road, which is a lovely stretch of quintessential farmland; we passed cows and ‘cricks’ and wooden fences all along the way. The tour itself was wonderful. We started out in the olive orchards talking about how the ranch came to be under the now-83-years-old of Mrs. Nan McEvoy.

She purchased the land as a retreat from San Francisco, but had to attach an agricultural purpose to the land, which previously had been a dairy farm. She wasn’t into dairying, and she didn’t want to do wine because it had already been done to a great degree in that region. So, because of a passion for olive oil and the distinctiveness of the crop, she decided to grow olives and to make an oil in the Tuscan style. When we were leaving the farm, my Dad asked me, “What are five things that you just learned [about olive oil]?” I decided that the five-point answer would be a good way to format this blog entry. So, what I learned, in no particular penta-order:

• McEvoy Ranch Olive Oil is made from six different Tuscan olive varietals: Frantoio, Leccino, Pendolino, Maurino, Leccio del Corno and Coratina. The olives are stone-ground into a paste(the paste is comprised of the entire olive, pit and all).



• McEvoy uses no presses for making their olive oil. This is pretty unique! Instead, they use a series of centrifuges to separate the olive paste from the oils. After a few months of sitting, the final sediments in the oil are then racked off.

  

• Heat and light are enemies of olive oil. Enemies! It's best to keep oil stored in dark, cool places…but not the refrigerator. Shame on all those fancy clear-glass cruets on countertops! Olive oil is best in the few months after purchase…it’s considered a fruit juice and *is* perishable!
• Olive oil made in the Tuscan style is distinctive because it’s made from olives that are harvested before they are ripe. This results in a pungent, peppery and intense olive oil rather than a mellow and soft oil. Tuscan style olive oil is good for ‘finishing’ dishes (which means drizzling a little oil on top of something and not really making a vinaigrette out of it).

• And the last, and most interesting, bit of information I learned was this: there is absolutely no regulation of what can be sold as an ‘Extra Virgin Olive Oil’ here in the United States. Gasp! EVOO (thanks, Rachel Ray) is ‘supposed’ to be made from the earliest cold pressing of the olives; it’s the freshest and least acidic oil from the olives; after the first press, the paste is repeatedly pressed to get out all of the oil, creating friction and heat, and causing volatile compounds to escape from the oil and start degrading it. The rest of the world, essentially, abides by the regulations of the IOC (the International Olive Council). There is hope for us, though. Here in California exists an organization that has set up a program for that ensures that we Americans can get the highest-quality olive oil as well. From the McEvoy website: “Although there are no current laws which require certification of extra virgin olive oil in the US there is one organization, the California Olive Oil Council (COOC), that supports certified olive oil standards as established by the International Olive Council (IOC), headquartered in Madrid, Spain, [and that] provides grower, producer and consumer education. Electing to belong to the COOC means voluntarily being held to the highest of standards. To be deemed extra virgin, and to receive the right to use the COOC seal there are four basic criteria: The oil must be extracted from olives free from any treatment other than washing, decantation, centrifugation, or filtration (no chemical processing); it must be “cold-processed” (at a temperature less than 27 degrees centigrade); it must not exceed certain oleic acidity levels (0.5% according to COOC, which is more stringent even than the IOC standard of 0.8%); and it must have an aroma and flavor judged as worthy by a certified panel of official tasters."

The moral of all that fancy talk is this: if you're in the United States and you want to make sure that the olive oil that you're getting is the real deal extra-virgin, make sure you look for the COOC seal of approval.

After the ranch, we got some bread and cheese at the Marin French Cheese Company a few minutes away and sat outside by their lake eating, feeding the birds and being silly. We then headed for the Point Reyes Lighthouse, which my parents had never seen. They were very impressed, and very winded, by the walk down and up the three-hundred stairs to the lighthouse itself. It was perfectly cloudy and the sea was a little rough; I think I saw China through the fog, though!

I planned to take my parents (okay, to drive them there but for them to pay for my dinner) to La Note, a Provencal French restaurant in downtown Berkeley. I'd never been there, but I had been told it was excellent, and I figured that since my parents had been unable to visit France this summer, as they have almost every summer in the past since Kurt and I have been out of the house, due to my Dad's health problems, I'd take them to Provence when they came to see me!

The restaurant was adorable. Very 'French.' Tres chic. Fantastique. I ordered a 'Panache' to drink, how could I not? I had no idea that 'panache' had a second meaning, aside from flamboyant style or action, which was simply 'mixed.' But it sounded cool. It was, predictably, a mixed drink with La Fin du Monde golden ale, grenadine and Sprite. I found it rather funny that the name of the ale, translated, is 'the end of the world.' When I did some research on their website, I found that the beer is brewed in Quebec and was named to honor the great expolrers who believed they had reached the end of the world when they discovered America.

We ordered Pommes de Terre a l'Ailoi (roasted potatoes with aioli), and the Salade Verte (green leaf lettuce tossed in a Dijon mustard vinaigrette) as appetizers. Both were delicious. For our main meals, we each ordered one of the Chef's Specials: I, the Vegetable Ratatouille over Rosemary Couscous; my Mom the Salmon and Cherry Tomato Brochettes with a Tarragon and Creme Fraiche mustard dressing; and my Dad the pasta special with roasted chicken. By the end of the meal, we all felt like it could be 'le fin du monde,' we were so satiated. So we browsed around Berkeley for a while letting our food digest, then we packed in the car and headed to our respective beds for a good night's rest. It was an excellent day!