Is Oregon the Next Great Region for Olive Oil?

The olive groves you see onscreen in Eat, Pray, Love or Netflix’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat—or the ones depicted on olive oil bottles themselves—bask in Tuscan sunshine, blossom on lush Mediterranean islands, or thrive along warm Spanish coasts. All those places are far cries from the chilly, wet winters of Oregon, where the first frost usually settles in before Thanksgiving.

The Northwest's cool, damp climate may be nothing like what you'd find in better-known olive oil regions, but just a few decades ago, observers made similar arguments in regard to the area's dubious prospects as a wine region. Now olive trees dot the much-acclaimed Pinot Noir orchards, and from these groves come tiny quantities of ultra-high-quality olive oil.

Paul Durant of Durant Olive Mill was one of Oregon’s early olive growers. His parents were pioneers in the local wine industry. But as climate change becomes increasingly unignorable, he posits that it’s unlikely that Oregon agriculture could be centered on high-end Pinot Noir in 20 years: “It will be some other crop,” he says.

At the beginning of the 21st century, a few farmers began planting olive groves in Oregon. It's been an uphill road for the hardy trees and their determined growers to bring those olives to market as oil—battling the weather, the law, and public perception of what olive oil should taste like—to find a foothold in an industry where mass production and low prices dominate. For almost a decade, growers like Durant have sold blends of Oregon olive oils, or oils made by blending local fruit with California olives to bulk them up. But come November, a new olive oil will hit the market: the first 100% Oregon grown, single-varietal estate extra virgin olive oil.

Oregon oils like this one have a lot of what oil-tasting pros look for in flavor: they’re uncommonly fresh, and even astringent. A drop on your tongue is like a blast of green grass. To American consumers used to picking the most affordable mass-market brands, these oils might seem surprisingly pungent, but to experts, they’re some of the best there is—but there's just not that much to go around.

One of the factors that makes Oregon's oil so good is that the olives there must be picked in a less-mature state to make sure that they are off the trees before the first frost (just one frost can ruin the entire crop). Less-ripe olives produce less oil, explains Javier Fernandez-Salvador, the project leader for Oregon State University’s program studying olive growing in the state. Early-picked fruit produces more of the polyphenols that give the oil such bold flavor, but it also means the olives yield less liquid.

Durant began planting olive trees in 2005, and in 2008 they added a mill. But a few rough stretches of chilly winters meant they needed to source additional olives from Northern California to make it all work. The last brutal winter was in 2013, though, and more recent years brought long, hot summers that buoyed Durant’s production. Those warm summers brought the 2017 introduction of the first widely available 100% Oregon-grown olive oil. But like the small-run oils offered by a half-dozen others around the state, it’s made with a blend of different types of olives. Given the low yields, small producers like Tom Vail of Calamity Hill bring their fruit to Durant for milling, each making a multi-variety blend to maximize the oil production using “every olive that we’ve got.”

David and Carmen Lawrence of 45North Olive Oil own the only other mill in the state, and this year, after an almost 15-year journey, they have won over frost, laws, and logistics to finally sell a unique product: the first single-varietal estate olive oils from Oregon.

The Lawrences moved to Amity, Oregon from Vancouver, Washington in 2005 so David could farm more. All around them, vineyards bloomed, but their ratty, rocky soil boded poorly for winemaking. At about the same time, a California company pitched olive trees to local farmers, but David wasn’t taken by the types they were selling. He began researching and planning, inspecting the climate and soil to match it to microclimates on the other side of the world, hunting for olives that might survive the Oregon winters.

“We went with tough skin, trying anything we could get our hands on. The Tuscan varieties did well,” Carmen recalls. David skipped over the smaller California olives other people planted in favor of bigger fruit: “We have to pick these!” says Carmen, who uses vacation time from her day job to hand-harvest all of the fruit alongside her husband and daughter. Mechanical harvesters like those used in California aren’t an option on these rugged hills.

The Lawrences' trees—now 58 different varieties in all—grew full and fluffy. In 2011, they bought a mini-mill to make olive oil—just big enough to process two trees worth of olives at a time. It’s still not a big enough volume to bother with the type of commercial certification that they have up at Durant.

The same year that the Lawrences bought the mill, though, Oregon passed a law designed to aid farmers in selling products directly to customers. But the Farm Direct Marketing Law specifically listed each approved product, opening the gates for fruit syrups, jams, and jellies, and pickled vegetables. Since there were no farmers producing their own small runs of olive oil yet, it didn't make the list—and that omission meant the Lawrences couldn’t sell their oil.

Single varietal extra virgin olive oils from Oregon are a niche product inside a niche industry. The creamy, unique oils showcase the flavor of each specific type of olive, milled in tiny batches. But in order to sell those small batches, the law had to change to cover farm-direct olive oil sales. Since everyone else did their milling at Durant's mill, a space that’s commercially licensed to produce food, the Lawrences were the only ones who needed the law changed.

“Two people can go and complain to the state and get the law changed?” Carmen remembers thinking. “Yeah, like that’s going to happen.” But last year, State Senator Brian Boquist championed their cause and, as of this past summer, the family’s production is legal to sell. They’ll offer about 160 bottles of oil—as soon as they harvest and mill it.

Nobody in the industry really has faith that Oregon olive oil will be the next Pinot Noir, skyrocketing the region to international acclaim. But Durant and the Lawrences both see things improving in their orchards. “Ours is pretty young,” notes Durant of their 13 acres. He’s busy adding more productive varieties where existing trees have had poor yields. “Up until this summer, we’ve had record heats for three years,” he says, and hotter summers mean more trees will thrive. Carmen Lawrence says they’d never considered climate change in their olive planting, but adds that it “absolutely” helps them.

Fernandez-Salvador, from his academic perch at OSU, agrees that things are changing—in the climate and the industry—but still doesn’t think it’s likely that Oregon olive oils will ever be a common sight on shelves at bigger grocery store chains. The small yield and lack of mass-market appeal for the pungent oils keep the quantities limited. And while an award might increase the product’s visibility, there’s a minimum number of bottles needed to enter such competitions. The result is that even as conditions get better for Oregon olive growers, this olive oil may continue to be the best product that almost nobody gets to try.

With the love of a parent describing their brilliant but troublesome child, Fernandez-Salvador laughs: “It’s a very special industry.”

Originally Appeared on Epicurious