Olive Ole'

Yes, the 2007 Napa Valley grape harvest has come and gone, as has the 2007 Sonoma County grape harvest. But there's another harvest going on right now still: olives!

I was hanging out with my friend Maury recently, who's the groundskeeper at The Wine Country Inn in St. Helena, and he stepped me through the process they go through to harvest and cure the olives from the 25+ olive trees on the Inn's property. I found it fascinating! Hope you do too.

First, the olives are picked green. (Apparently, if they have any color at all, they're "too far gone".) Next, the olives, which are very toxic, are soaked in huge plastic garbage cans in LYE. That's right, bleach, lye, the bad stuff (the Inn uses Red Devil Drain Opener). According to Maury, you mix 8 oz. of lye per five gallons of water. The olives soak for six to eight hours in this lye/water mixture, until they turn a straw color all the way to the pit.

Next, the olives are then soaked in water for six to eight DAYS to get all the lye out. These olives need to be stirred every hour, and the water changed every four hours.

So how do you know if you've soaked out all the lye? Someone (!) has to taste them! Yes: If they burn your lips, they need more soakin!

Anyway, I found it quite fascinating. And once the olives have soaked thoroughly, they are then put into a brine/lemon juice solution and canned. And of course, you can add goodies to impart onto the olives other great flavors, such as rosemary and garlic (my personal favorite).

Needless to say, it's a pretty labor-intensive process. But Maury says these Wine Country Inn olives are the best he's ever had. And I have to agree.

BTW: Maury has his own blog about the various garden goings-on at the Inn. If you're interested, check it out.