harvest reports
Olive Culture
To My Friends:
Nature times the olive harvest perfectly. It seems like just when the last wine finishes fermentation, it is the start of the olive harvest. At Benziger Family Ranch we started to pick our estate olives on December 10th. This year's quality seems very high since a large percentage of the olives reached perfect ripeness. The harvest will continue into January.
Olives are becoming increasingly popular in Sonoma and now the olive harvest is starting to attract attention and tourists all on its own. Boutique and estate olive oils are becoming extremely popular and expensive.
At the Benziger Family Ranch olives are a key part of our strategy to create a unique Mediterranean poly-culture that contributes to a self-sustaining natural system of plants and animals. This biologically diverse system creates a balance between predator and prey, disease and natural suppression, which enables us to eliminate all pesticides (other than elemental sulphur). Our olives are interplanted among our grape vines, gardens and border areas. This helps to attract birds and insects deep into the vineyards that aid in the control of vineyard pests. Also, we believe this gives our olives and oil a more complex and interesting aroma and flavor. Barbitta-Benziger olive oils are available only at the winery. More...later...
P.S. It takes about 85 pounds of olives to produce one gallon of olive oil.
The only Biodynamically grown and produced olive oil in the valley.
Lalo goes high to retrieve the best quality olives. Notice the vineyards going dormant in the background.
Mike Benziger
Benziger Family Vineyards
Sonoma Mountain, December 12, 2003