This time of year, it seems that time flies by at Mach speed. All of the harvest duties are finished and the first bottling of the olive oils is complete. The blends came together nicely this year, due to a large selection of excellent oils. We harvested the Mission and Manzanillo varieties for the Sylverleaf Estate at 8 different stages, making for a very complex sensory profile (it tastes and smells reaaally good). The Foothills Blend contains oils from 4 harvests and is comprised of Mission, Manzanillo, Arbequina and Ascolano olives. Very smooth, fruity and de-li-cious.

That reminds me of a question that we are often asked:

How do you decide on a blend for your olive oils?

It’s not quite as easy as it might appear, but here goes. When we harvest olives, we keep the oil from that harvest in its very own container. After decanting these oils 3-5 times, we go back and taste each of the oils and rate them by how they smell, feel and taste. (More about all of that in another post.) Next, we take a look at all of the ratings and make an educated guess for the first attempt at the blend. Pipette in hand, we pull out 2cc of this oil, 0.5cc of that oil, 4.5cc of another and so on, combine this mixture, warm it in our hands and tip up the cup. Now is the time to adjust the proportions of each batch and try again–until we get it just right.

For the Estate, we are looking for complexity and a marked “olivie” flavor, from green olives to black. The Foothills Blend should show a noticeable fruitiness and sweetness. That’s exactly what we got and we hope that you enjoy the 2008 olive oils!