It's nice to have friends with good taste. My sister-in-law Sue Riera gifted me with a locally produced, California artisanal olive oil this past Christmas. She knows the owners of the French Creek Olive Oil Company, Don and Patti Dolan, who tag the bottles with the date of the olive pressing and the specific name of the olive grove and oil. For example, the bottle pictured above is titled "Logan, Rock Wall Vinyard, November 7, 2005." Their olive groves are located in Shingle Springs, not too far from Sacramento CA and they can be reached at Dolan@directcon.net if you'd like to reserve some olives for your own oil pressing this fall. (NOTE: The Dolans also pick from other olive groves in Amador County which feature 100 trees or more).
I don't know much about oilive oil, although I use it frequently. This oil is a lemony yellow color, and has a delicate taste that I will enjoy using in salad dressings or on bruschetta. I was told once that the deeper, greener color an olive oil is, the more "fruity" it will taste. I'm afraid that's all the guidance on olive oil I can offer at this point, but fortunately for you, dear reader, there is a terriffic article called How To Taste Olive Oil over at 101 Cookbooks.
Having read the article on how to taste olive oil, I confess I did not work too hard at sucking up the oil and determining if it was a "one, two or three cough" oil. Perhaps I could say it tasted "grassy". What I can say for sure about my Logan oil is: it was good! And that's good enough for me.
Gorgeous photo!
Posted by: Elise | February 10, 2006 at 01:29 PM
Elise beat me to it, but WOW, Andrea, that is a gorgeous photo!!
Posted by: Amy | February 12, 2006 at 11:17 AM
I am so surprised....I thought my picture suffered from uneven lighting, shadows etc. I hoped it came across as "artsy" instead of just me bumbling around...and I guess I got lucky!
Thanks for the kind words, Elise and Amy.
Posted by: Andrea | February 13, 2006 at 10:50 AM