May 19, 2006 -- On the Olive Oil Trail, Glass by Glass
By WENDY KNIGHT

"YOU need to warm the glass in your hand first," said Ted Hall, the proprietor of Long Meadow Ranch, a 650-acre property in the Mayacamas Mountains high above the Napa Valley in northern California.

Mr. Hall was standing in the ranch's wine cave, a rammed-earth structure that smelled of earth, damp and pure, with a hint of spilled wine. An original Andy Warhol cow print was hanging in the foyer. On the wood bar, Mr. Hall displayed two wine bottles, proper glasses and a tray of cheese.

But this was not the usual event in California's wine country. There's a new addition to today's wine tasting — extra-virgin olive oil. And not just at the Long Meadow Ranch.

As olive oil is becoming more widely used by Americans, the number of olive-oil producers has risen, as has the interest in touring and tasting. A handful of properties in the Napa and Sonoma Valleys north of San Francisco have begun to offer olive-grove tours and olive-oil tastings as alternatives to winery hopping. Some of the tastings are for both wine and olive oil; others focus exclusively on the fruit of the olive tree.

Mr. Hall said that extra-virgin olive oil is evaluated in three steps — with the nose, palate and throat. The characteristics of the oil depend, among other factors, on the varietals used and the ripeness of the olives when harvested. For example, Italian olives, when picked green, tend to be peppery, while Spanish varietals are more mellow in taste.

Olive-oil tastings are as precise as those for wine. Mr. Hall said he senses "freshly mowed grass," "the husk of a walnut" and "a little bit of apple" in his estate's 2004 Spanish varietals.

To sample properly, the oil is taken into the mouth with more of a suck from the sides of the mouth — producing a slurping sound — than a refined sip from the lips. Once it is inside the mouth, the oil is swished across the tongue, and the taster lets it settle into the pocket between the cheek and the gum before swallowing. About 10 seconds after it hits the throat, there's an urge to cough, a testament to the oil's piquancy.

When a recent group let loose with the coughs, Mr. Hall laughed. "We call that a two-cough olive," he said. "That's good."

The tourist season in Napa and Sonoma runs from May through September. Olives are picked November through January, but most places aren't open to the public during the busy harvesting period. The ideal time to visit olive groves is May and June, when the olive oil from the fall harvest is released.

To get to the town of Napa, you drive north from Oakland up Highway 80 past a seemingly endless string of shopping complexes and onto Route 29, entering Napa from the south. Ducking off the main road into Napa's business district reveals the town's agriculture and mining history in buildings like the Historic Napa Mill along the Napa River (now home to a historic hotel and several retail shops) and Copia, the American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts, an educational center that celebrates the region's agricultural bounty with demonstration gardens and multimedia presentations.

The real beauty of the region unfolds a few miles north of Napa in the town of Yountville — with its classically restored brick and clapboard buildings and stellar restaurants — and in the Rutherford Appellation, a fertile valley framed by springtime jade green mountains that turn progressively tawny with summer's heat.

Long Meadow Ranch is in the Rutherford Appellation on Route 29, one of two north-south routes winding through the valley. Tours of the ranch begin at the Rutherford Gardens, the estate's vegetable gardens. A Pinzgauer, a Swiss Army troop carrier, transports guests a few miles north to the entrance of the estate. The "integrated organic farming system" grows heirloom vegetables, grapes for wine, grass for the ranch's Scottish longhorn and shorthorn cattle, and Italian and Spanish olives.

AS olives mature, they turn from green to red to black. Olives harvested early, when they're green, produce pungent, peppery oil. Late-harvested olives are more subtle.

"Harvesting is an artistic decision," Mr. Hall said. "We harvest olives when they're 75 percent black, 25 percent red or green," creating a delicate oil. Indeed, Long Meadow's Prato Lungo olive oil felt like a piece of fine silk floating inside the mouth.

Another vineyard that features tastings and tours of its olive-oil process is Round Pond, on Rutherford Crossroads, a stately road that connects Route 29 to the Silverado Trail, the less-traveled north-south route in the Napa Valley. Olive trees line the driveway to the olive mill. A pair of live oak trees and two dozen agave plants loosely define a patio where lunches are served. Twelve acres of olive trees are planted in flat fields bordering the mill to the north and west along the Napa River. Across the driveway from the one-story, glass and steel building are naked grape vines and sun-yellow mustard plants, used as ground cover for the vineyards.

Round Pond makes wines, vinegars and olive oils, including the award-winning blood orange and Meyer lemon oils made with organic citrus fruit and Italian and Spanish olives grown on the 400-acre property. The fruit is hand harvested from November to January — the Italian varietals when they are green and the Spanish olives when they are black. With baskets secured around their torsos, the pickers strip the branches, gently pulling the olives into the baskets.

"The fruit is delicate," said the tour manager, Jill Jackson, a petite woman with the sun-blushed, wiry appearance of a farmhand. "If it's mishandled it produces a chemical reaction that makes the oil less flavorful."

Turning olives into oil at Round Pond is a mix of Old World charm and high-tech efficiency. With its gleaming stainless steel equipment, the impeccably clean olive mill resembles an industrial kitchen and smells of citrus. The state-of-the-art equipment — including the stone press, a machine with two massive Italian granite wheels riding atop a four-ton granite wheel — is made by Pieralisi, an Italian company that has been manufacturing such equipment since 1860. Three years ago, Round Mill hired an Italian mill master, who, according to Ms. Jackson, was able to translate the operating instructions, which were written in Italian.

Within four hours of the picking, a forklift empties the olives into a stainless steel bin. The fruit rides up a conveyor belt into a vacuum chute that removes the stems and leaves. The olives are then deposited into a tray and washed. Where they go next depends on which varietals are being processed. Late-harvested Spanish olives are fed directly into the stone press. Three stainless steel blades and a scrapper continuously push the olives under the rotating wheels, crushing the olives. Early-harvested Italian olives are chopped and pressed in the hammer mill.

Olive paste from the mills is pushed into a type of kneader, where it is processed and pumped into a horizontal and then a vertical centrifuge, where the water is finally separated from the oil. The oil is stored in stainless steel tanks under nitrogen until it is blended and bottled. The total processing time takes an astonishingly quick two hours, producing an exceptionally fresh product.

"Most people have never tasted olive oil the way we do here," said Ryan McConnell, a former Goldman Sachs analyst and a second-generation owner of the property.

At the McEvoy Ranch near Petaluma, there is an opportunity to see a private estate as well as taste the olive oil. The ranch is the country home of the San Francisco philanthropist Nan McEvoy, who is credited with initiating the modern commercial olive oil industry in California.

Only after buying the 550-acre property two decades ago did Mrs. McEvoy discover that it was strictly zoned for agriculture. So she imported and planted 3,000 Tuscan olive trees. Today, the property's 18,000 trees produce 24,000 liters of extra-virgin olive oil, making it one of the country's largest producers of organic estate olive oil.

From Napa, the McEvoy Ranch is reached by driving west on Routes 121 and 12 to Sonoma. You'll pass through the Carneros district, where fields of vineyards have supplanted the cattle and sheep that once grazed on this flat, elevated land.

In the town of Sonoma, Highway 116 leads west to the industrial town of Petaluma. The four-mile drive on Red Hill Road from Petaluma to McEvoy winds through Petaluma's residential areas into a landscape reminiscent of Virginia horse country.

The road to the McEvoy Ranch is revealed by a hand-painted sign just past the 19th century Union Schoolhouse. The dirt road leading to the farmhouse's offices traces alongside incredibly steep and vibrant hills. A mechanical iron gate reminds visitors that access to the private property is by invitation only.

Guests at the McEvoy Ranch are escorted on a walking tour west toward the gardens. Three huge live oak trees and an irrigation pond border one side of the dirt road. The silver-branched olive trees line the emerald hillsides, creating a pleasing vista of contrasting green hues. Organic cherry, Mandarin orange and Meyer lemon trees (from which McEvoy Ranch makes a tasty marmalade) are planted in neat rows near the greenhouses.

Back at the farmhouse, guests tour the mill and taste the oils.

"We tell our guests what to look for as consumers," said the tour manager, Jill Lee. "Most people don't realize what they're buying on the shelf. For example, with a Tuscan-style olive oil they would want to look for a fresh, fruity or grassy taste."

Whether the olive grove tours are cultivating sophisticated home chefs or horticulturists is hard to discern. Linda Cox-Myers, a home-textile entrepreneur from San Francisco, visited the ranch over Mother's Day weekend with eight other family members. Though she had tried the McEvoy Ranch olive oil and was "duly impressed," she said, she and her husband, who own a weekend home nearby where they've planted 10 olive trees, were "curious to see what they were doing" at the ranch. "We learned a lot about caring for our own trees," she said.

Regardless of their motivations, more people visit the McEvoy Ranch each year. Sixty people toured the ranch in 2002. In 2005, there were more than 500.

Seeing and tasting aren't the only ways to experience olive oil in wine country. The Carneros Inn offers an exfoliation spa treatment using crushed olive stones and local extra-virgin olive oil. The mixture is gently applied to the body to scrub off dead skin. With warm, damp towels, the therapist removes the paste, which is surprisingly non-oily, and finishes with a light massage using honeydew lotion.

Sure, there are plenty more vineyard-speckled country roads to explore. But the decadent treatment may leave you sidling up to the nearest bar asking for the one delight most synonymous with Napa Valley: a glass of wine, please.