Olivaia was founded in 2012 by cofounders Giulio Zavolta and his wife Dr. Rachelle Bross, starting with the purchase of a mature Lindsay olive grove with many neglected trees, some over 100 years old. Photo contributed
Written by Frank Lopez
One Central Valley olive oil maker has been seeing the fruits of his labor in a big way this year.
Olivaia, a small batch producer of estate extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) in Lindsay, won awards at the Big Fresno Fair’s San Joaquin Valley Olive Oil Competition in June.
Olivaia’s OLA Estate Sevillano took Best of Show and a gold medal in the EVOO category.
The competition is open to all olive oil producers in the state with products made from the 2022 harvest. This year’s competition received a total of 63 entries from 27 producers throughout the state.
This year, Olivaia also won best of show, gold and silver awards at several other state and national competitions, including the Central Coast Olive Oil Competition, the California State Fair Olive Oil Competition and the New York International Olive Oil Competition.
Olivaia was founded in 2012 by cofounders Giulio Zavolta and his wife Dr. Rachelle Bross, starting with the purchase of a mature olive grove with many neglected trees, some over 100 years old.
It was then about a five-year process to rehabilitate the trees. About three years into the process, Olivaia began selling table olives.
After losing a major buyer of their ripe olives, they decided to produce olive oil. In 2017, Olivaia began to sell its first EVOO.
Today Olivaia works with about 1,000 trees.
Prior to buying the grove, Zavolta had a friend in Culver City who would share farm-grown olives with him, later discovering that he was one of the largest olive growers in the Central Valley.
After a couple of visits to his friend’s groves, he became fascinated by the process and began looking for olive groves to purchase.
His interest in olives and olive oil comes from his family, who grew table olives and produced olive oil to sell for many years, going back as far as his father’s great grandfather’s time.
Zavolta’s father left Italy for the U.S. without much experience with olives, with the talent skipping a generation.
But Zavolta grew it back.
“If you really do care about the environment and being a custodian of the environment, farming certainly makes that connection in a very direct way, and with immediate payback and rewards,” Zavolta said.
Finding a way to bring back thousands of trees from the brink of death is a very rewarding experience, he said. It wouldn’t have been possible with many other types of crops.
For the first few years of the rehabilitation, there was some challenges, with the trees producing so little yields that Zavolta wondered if the venture was feasible.
Olive trees can produce for many years, with trees in Italy that are over 600 years old still in production. There are some in the world that are over 1,000 years old that still produce.
Zavolta said olives use about a third of the water than other crops grown locally.
The area of Lindsay was once famous for olive production, known as the “Olive Capital of the World,” with the whole ripe olive industry being built on the back of olives from Lindsay.
Over the years, with pressure from countries subsidizing their olive industries, foreign imports made prices drop and forced farmers to move to different crops.
Zavolta said California olives and olive oils are superior to imports because of higher standards in the states than other countries.
Today, Olivaia produces around 40,000 tons of table olives and 200-400 gallons of oil a year.
Zavolta said many people don’t realize how hard it is to make a premium bottle of olive oil, and that it could be just as challenging as producing a premium wine.
“It starts with the right farming practices. You have to realize that the soil that you’re growing your olives on is where the trees are going to get their nutrients and also the very notes in the olive as a result,” Zavolta said.
Olivaia grows their olives organically, with plants and weeds covering the ground, providing a more natural biodiversity, he said.
Picking the olives at the right time as crucial, with Olivaia’s olives being picked when they’re still green, right before they begin to darken, for maximum flavor.
Since the company cannot compete with the olive oils in grocery stores when it comes to volume, Zavolta said they are going for quality to make a premium product with better flavor.
Zavolta said there plans to…