Within hours of being harvested, our olives are transported to the Ranch’s onsite milling facility. As olives are a relatively new crop to this part of California, we quickly weigh and study the fruit in order to gather information that may be beneficial to future generations of olive growers. The fruit is then poured slowly into the hopper and a defoliator gently pulls off any leaves and stems.

At McEvoy Ranch, combining old and new methods, our fruit is crushed by heavy (over twelve hundred pounds each) twin-granite wheels the old fashioned way before our state-of-the-art Rapanelli machinery goes to work — a way of milling most aptly described as “cold-processed,” without the use of heat or chemicals.

After the crushing, the aromatic green paste is pumped into our Sinolea extractor, the only machine of its kind in the United States. The Sinolea works by dipping thousands of steel blades into the paste, retrieving droplets of oil in an extremely gentle process that creates no heat of any kind and therefore protects the fragile composition and quality of the oil. Any vegetative water remaining in the oil is spun out by way of a centrifuge.

The oil is then ready for bottling as either Olio Nuovo, “new oil,” or is left to settle in tanks where the batches can intermingle during a mellowing period of a few months to create the consistently rich, flavorful oil bottled and sold as McEvoy Ranch Traditional Blend.