A special visitor recently traveled to the picturesque Frantoio Grove on the rural outskirts of Gilroy, where local Jeff Martin’s 30-acre lot is quietly producing a rising star in the select world of first-class olive oils.
Martin – a 60-year-old novice olive oil maker awaiting his fourth harvest in November – welcomed in January to his grove an Italian retailer he bumped into at the San Francisco Fancy Food Show. The olive oil connoisseur was in search of premium Californian olive oil worthy enough to showcase on his company’s website, www.italities.com.
The Italian man, Roberto Cetrullo, who founded his business with the desire to share with his customers the best olive oils produced by small-scale artisans, was so blown away by the fresh, buttery and nutty taste of Martin’s magnum opus that he asked if he could take a bottle with him. He wanted to have it scrutinized by the most renowned olive oil experts.
Martin told Cetrullo – was trained as a professional taster in Italy – to go for it.
“Frankly, I know I put out good olive oil,” said Martin of his liquid gold (which is closer to chartreuse in shade).
Rocca’s Market in San Martin can hardly keep the sought-after commodity in stock as news of its decadent goodness spreads slowly by word-of-mouth. Or taste.
Martin’s first cache of 4,000 bottles hit stores in 2011. He has bottled 5,000 to date with an expected 10,000 more from the 2013 harvest. Martin says when his trees are fully matured, he hopes his grove will produce 30,000 bottles per harvest. Each contains 12.7 ounces and is priced at around $20.
The peridot-colored stuff, which turns salad consumption into Epicurean nirvana, tastes heavenly drizzled over roasted asparagus or is divine sopped up with a hunk of fresh bread and sprinkled with sea salt, is already certified Extra Virgin by the California Olive Oil Council. This is the highest ranking standard when it comes to quality.
But Cetrullo wanted to know if Frantoio Olive Oil had what it takes to score the stamp of approval from L’ Organizzazione Nazionale Assaggiatori Olio di Oliva, which in English translates to the National Association of Olive Oil Tasters. It is the oldest school for professional olive oil tasting.
Two weeks ago, Cetrullo got back to Martin with a report card.
After shipping Frantoio Olive Oil to the Italian tasting experts in olive oil sensory analysis – the first thing they asked was: “Where in Italy was this made?”
The answer shocked them, said Cetrullo. The delectable mystery oil was a foreign marvel from a relatively small grove in the Golden State – 2,600 miles away from the rolling hillsides of Tuscany, where 21.5 percent of the world’s top notch olive oil is cultivated.
“It validated what the California organization had already determined,” said Martin, a home developer-turned olive farmer, miller and seller. “It is truly a full-time job.”
Hearing the good news from a potential customer was icing on the cake, he added.
But locals who first stumbled upon the hidden gem at old-timey Rocca’s Market just a short drive north in San Martin never needed that high brow validation to begin with. One taste, and they were hooked.
“It’s hard to keep it in stock. People buy two, three bottles at a time,” said store co-owner Tom Rocca. “People are shipping it out as gifts like nobody’s business.”
Which makes it comical to consider Rocca’s initial inventory request when Martin stopped in and asked about selling his oil at the historic market, which is known for championing locally grown produce and artisan food novelties.
Rocca asked for two bottles. Martin insisted he take two cases.
“I told him if it didn’t sell, I would take it back,” recalled Martin, who also sells his product at LJB Farms in San Martin, Solis Winery on Hecker Pass and Clos la Chance Winery on Watsonville Road.
He’s also sending cases to stores in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Pa., Washington D.C., Georgia and Rhode Island.
Delightful to eat, delicate to make
Before titillating the tastebuds, the olive oil-making process from tree, to mill, to bottle is as delicate – and expensive – as it gets in the agriculture business.
It also requires the most patience. Martin had to wait five years before reaping his first 12 tons of Frantoio olives in November 2010.
But it was worth it. Martin recalls “my first year’s oil was absolutely beautiful.”
He also put in the elbow grease in the interim, attending every class, seminar and tasting event he could find.
“You put a lot of time and effort into it,” he said. “So you want to make sure everything is done exactly how you want it.”
When the olive grove is ready for harvest in the fall, Martin and roughly 30 workers will hand pick, wash and de-leaf the green fruit.
Save for the pruning and picking, “I’m a one-man show,” Martin jokes.
The olives are then transported via truck to a mill in Livermore. And that’s where the magic happens.
After 45 minutes of a massaging process called malaxation that turns the olives into a paste, that substance is then placed into a centrifuge to separate the oil. The oil is placed into stainless steel, oxygen-free storage tanks and kept in a temperature-controlled environment until it is ready to be bottled and labeled.
“There’s just something different about real, fresh olive oil,” explained Martin, sitting on a lone picnic table under a tree on the north end of his quaint olive oasis. “It’s everything. That’s the deal.”
A former landscape architect whose family has grown Merlot and Cabernet grapes for 30 years in Sonoma County, Martin broke away from tradition in 2004.
“I didn’t want to do what they do,” said Martin, whose mother and brother grow grapes.
His wife of 27 years, Pam, was all for it.
“I thought it was really exciting. He was exploring the grape idea, but it just seemed like it would be more interesting to do something that is not grown around here,” she said. “It’s very suitable for this climate.”
Not only that, “(olives) have a great presence and they last forever,” Martin added.
By “forever,” he means an impressive 400 to 500 years.
Martin didn’t fall too far from the family tree, however. Olive oil making is in his blood.
He made a pilgrimage to his relative’s old stomping grounds in January 2011, and discovered a 140-year orchard consisting of several hundred olive trees still standing, right where his great-great-grandfather planted it in 1871.
“I didn’t realize the scope of his olive involvement until I went up there,” Martin told the Dispatch two years ago.
So far, Martin has reaped 12, nine and 30 tons of olives in his first three harvests. His goal is to reach 90 to 100 tons in the future. He also plans on building a mill on the property in order to eliminate the cost and risk of trucking the delicate fruit 50 miles to another location.
The fruit, on that note, is the inspiration for the brand, which is named for the 3,500 Frantoio trees dotting his property, swaying in the breeze with leaves that give off a silvery tint. In Italian, Frantoio means “olive mill.”
The $20 asking price per bottle, Martin adds, is a lot more bang for your buck than what you get with nice bottle of wine that usually lasts one night once it’s uncorked and imbibed.
“I didn’t go into this thinking I was going to get rich quick,” chuckled the man, who has yet to reap any profits from his first agricultural venture. “When I have the mill going and when I reach the 3,000-gallon stage, then there’s a profit and that’s probably not for another five years.”
In the meantime, Martin enjoys putting on his iPod and listening to music while he tends to his olive grove, which produced gold and silver medals at several olive oil competitions in Napa, Yolo and Los Angeles county fairs.
If savoring Frantoio is anything the way Martin’s wife describes it, the couple has good things coming to them.
“I never tasted anything like that,” said Pam, of the first time she tasted her husband’s product, straight from the mill. “It was an amazing experience.”
