The olive barn

Ojai Olive Oil, Inc. is a family owned and operated business that came into existence 10 years ago. Our farm is located in Southern California’s Ojai Valley that lies straight north of the coastal town of Ventura - 80 miles north of Los Angeles and 35 miles south of Santa Barbara. The Asquith Farm is located on the southern edge of the Los Padres National Forest. We are surrounded by dramatic natural beauty and share our land with numerous forms of wildlife that roam the hills and mountains. Like a vigilant guardian of the Ojai Valley and its bounty, Chief Peak rises more than 5000 feet just to the north of our olive grove.

130-year old Spanish olive tree

Since Ventura County is on the same latitude as Casablanca in North Africa, it enjoys an ideal Mediterranean climate to grow olive trees. Ojai farmers realized that back in the 1880s, when they first established several olive groves and operated a communal olive oil press. Although the economics of the time eventually led to the abandonment of this venture, luckily, some old olive trees were saved throughout the valley. It is by rejuvenating an original grove that Ojai Olive Oil, Inc. was created. On our land, an avenue of over 130-year old trees tower over the younger specimens growing up around them and remind us of the importance of continued traditions. More than 2000 new olive trees were planted over the past 11 years to expand the olive grove.

A field of French olive trees

Extensive research was needed to choose the varietals best suited for the production of the type of extra-virgin olive oils we wanted. Eventually, we settled on the Italian varietals Frantoio, Leccino, Nocelara del Belice, and Pendolino, on the French variety Columella, the Greek Kalamata, and on the Spanish Lechin de Sevilla, We also built a small nursery, where we propagate olive oil varieties such as Columella, Lechin de Sevilla, and others; this is for our own use and to sell to the public.

Ripe and ready for harvest

Come harvest time, between November and January, our olives are all picked by hand. The bins of fruit (which on average contain 40 lbs. of olives) are brought by the pickers straight to the barn located in the midst of the olive grove. The production facility housed in the barn consists of an olive press, a climate-controlled storage area for the olive oil drums, and a tasting room. We use state-of-the-art equipment imported from Italy to produce our olive oils, and are currently using the third model we’ve acquired (a smaller and middle-sized press were sold after we outgrew them).

The olives are processed within hours of coming off the trees in order to protect them from oxidation and any fermentation. Our stainless-steel olive press is a 2-phase machine that adds no heat (cold pressing) and no additives of any kind to the fruit. The process consists of 4 parts:

• in the first station, any leaves are blown off and the fruit is washed
• in the second, the clean fruit is crushed to a paste in a hammer-mill crusher
• in the third, the paste is mixed in large tanks for over an hour to prepare it for the separation
• in the last stage, the now more emollient paste is transferred to the centrifuge that spins at 70 revolutions per second to extract the golden or green liquid

The filling, capping, and labeling of the bottles is all completed on site. What we sell you at in our Tasting Room, at the Ojai Farmers’ Market, through our vendors, or from our website are some of the freshest extra-virgin olive oils you can find in the United States. Now that so much information has been circulated relating to the adulteration in overseas olive oil production, more and more people are coming to understand the importance of finding an uncontested source of fresh olive oil. One of our sayings is “Our olive oils are delivered from our trees to your table!