Stonehouse California Olive Oil

Hi friends! I haven't posted in a few weeks because I was traveling through Northern California and New York. But, now I’m excited to share a unique find with you.

During my time in San Francisco, I visited the famous Ferry Building Marketplace. It’s there that I discovered Stonehouse California Olive Oil.

What attracted me to them was their flavored olive oils available to taste test. I tried all of them and fell in love with the Basil, Rosemary, Lemon, and Olio Santo flavors, to name a few. I could tell the quality was excellent.

I learned Stonehouse’s Extra Virgin Olive Oils (EVOO) have won gold, silver and bronze medals at the annual L.A. County Fair, which hosts the largest olive oil competition in the world. In other words, when you buy a bottle of their olive oil you’re truly buying some of the best olive oils in the world.So, I highly recommend their EVOO products.

I walked away with their Blood Orange Olive Oil. With this standout product they included a few recipes, which you can find here. I can’t wait to use this EVOO for salads or baking.

I left the ferry building marketplace thinking this flavored EVOO is pricey at $25 a bottle, but it’s a something special to enjoy. And, it’s a quality product that is worth every drop!

I also had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing Alex Mart, the manager, and learned more about the olive oil business.

How are the flavored olive oils made?

For the flavored oils, we are pressing whole fresh fruits with the olives. And it’s amazing because its not a traditional fusion.

The advantage to doing the fresh pressing is you get the fresh flavor; it doesn’t taste like dried basil it tastes like fresh basil. And you’re not using dried citrus rind where the citrus will have degraded a lot in terms of flavor or just had more air exposure.

One of the enemies of any kind of olive oil is air exposure. So you eliminate that completely by using fresh ingredients.

What inspired your company to make olive oil?

We wanted to make something that we knew was fresh and local, supporting local agriculture and farms. A lot of the olive oils from Italy are part extra virgin, then they’ll cut in refined hazelnut oil and lower quality olive oil that’s five years old.

Why are you personally drawn to this?

I love food. The quality of food and supporting local is really important to me. It’s very farm to table and I love that. I also love that I get to talk about how the weather last year has impacted the olives.

I think there's a big disconnect in our culture between where our food comes from and what we put in our mouths. And I love being part of something that helps bring that connection back.

#OliveOil