This olive oil is a product of my local wine region.

Everyone I know in the wine/culinary world in the Ensenada area uses local oil year-around; most people use oil from the same press we’re using, which is used to press olives from many different orchards.

In the area, sometimes people use oil from their own orchards, sometimes they pick a favorite orchard or make their own blends. Sometimes they just buy a bottle at the local tienda. Because both the press and the olives are excellent and honest, everyone knows the product is going to be excellent — and of course being a wine region local olive oil is abundant.

Olives are pressed from roughly October through March. The oil is stored in containers in a cool building with no exposure to light or oxygen.

The oils change character over time. Some of them need as long as six to nine months to achieve a balance that makes them ideal. Others are at their best shortly after pressing. At any given time it’s possible to taste all the extant pressings and determine which are the best oils available right now. The point is not to win competitions but to continue to have great olive oil on hand for cooking and eating, and to continue to experience our wine country.

There was no harvest in 2011-2012; the next harvest will start in about six months. The change that we’ll taste, from the mature, mellow late-harvest oils we’ll be enjoying in summer, to the powerful early harvest oils that will be ready in fall will be part of the joy of getting in the rhythm of our landscape.

Our first bottles are now available for purchase at the Linkery and El Take It Easy, and on this website.

This oil is our Lot #1.

* Olives from an approximately 65 year old orchard in the San Vicente Valley south of Ensenada;
* Varietals are 80% Mission olives, with the remainder Manzanillo and Sevillano;
* An early harvest oil: these olives were harvested on 17 November 2010, and pressed on 18 November 2010;
* This oil is fragrant, has good fruitiness in the initial flavor, and has a very strong pepper-y kick that sneaks up on you at the end.  It is a potent oil for finishing almost any dish, and a striking presence on a salad or as a dipping oil.

I selected this barrel in a January tasting and drove it to North Park from Ensenada.  We are producing a numbered, 200-bottle run, when they’re sold, it’s gone.  The labels were letterpressed with handset metal type, by me and Tim Butler from Quality Letterpress. The 400ml bottles are available for $30 each.

Today we brought our first barrel of olive oil across from Ensenada. (Thank you Roberto for all the help!)  The bottles themselves are here now, too, and we finished the labels last week thanks to the work of Tim at Quality Letterpress.

This is a personal project that can only be done on a small scale.  I tasted many oils at Tito’s place and picked the single drums that I want to bring across, starting with this particular barrel, a November 18, 2010 pressing from the San Vicente Valley orchard of Rafael Felix.

We’ll be bottling and labeling by hand.  It was great to work with Tim to set the type on the labels, and to physically feed the papers through the press.  Everything about this product is reflective of the people involved in the process, and I hope you like it as much as I do.

We’ll have this first lot ready to sell within a couple weeks.  It’ll be a run of 200 bottles, priced at $30 per 400ml bottle.

Today we selected the first two olive oils that we will be offering.

The first oil (Lot #1) is an early-harvest oil from the Valle de San Vicente, south of Ensenada.  These olives were pressed on 18 November 2010.  It is about 80% Mission olives, with the remainder a mix of Manzanillo and Sevillano.  These are the same groves that produce the oil we use in our restaurants, we regularly source from this ranch due its consistent high quality.  The 18 November pressing stands out from other pressings of this ranch for its combination of balance and strength.

This oil is beautifully green-tinted in color, with a fragrant aroma of fruit and floral notes.  The flavor is very fruity with a strong pepper quality. The mouthfeel is pleasantly viscous.

Bottles of Lot #1 will be available around the 1st of February.  Production will be 200 bottles.

The second oil (Lot #2) we’ll be offering is a late harvest from an orchard in the Valle de Guadalupe, near Laja restaurant.  This oil was pressed on 4 February 2011. This oil is also about 80% Mission, with Manzanillo and a little bit of Sevillano. This is a very light, delicate oil, with excellent balance. It is as restrained as the Lot #1 is strong.

Bottles of Lot #2 will be available around the end of February.  Production will be around 500 bottles.

If you’d like to reserve any number of bottles for when they are available, please email me at jay@ensenadaoliveoil.com.

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