Squeezing a living from Queen Creek olives
Lisa Nicita
The Arizona Republic
Jun. 10, 2005 12:00 AM
I'll admit, I was a little uneducated about the world of olives before I popped in for a lesson at the Queen Creek Olive Mill.
didn't know they grew on trees. I certainly had no idea they could grow in Arizona. And, I had no clue how one would extract oil from a green little snack my mom religiously puts out for company.
Perry Rea filled me in. He owns the Queen Creek Olive Mill, a tan, shed-like building where he processes extra virgin olive oil. I quickly learned there's so much more to olives than pimientos.
"Olive is a fruit, so you need to treat it like a fruit," said Rea, 47, as he described to me how the olives are carefully harvested by hand from October to as late as January.
Rea is an olive connoisseur, if there ever was one. His mill is the only one in the state dedicated strictly to olive oil processing, and he takes his "hobby" as he called it, very seriously. He planted his first trees on the grove about three years ago.
He’s especially fond of extra virgin olive oil. During my visit, he referred to it more than once as "beautiful" and "unbelievable."
After the olives are picked from the 1,000 trees on the 25 acres Rea has dedicated to the grove, they are washed and funneled into a metal mill within 24 hours.
"It takes the olive and it just mashes it," he said, showing me the massive mixing bowl that the pits and the olives go into to help the oil stick together.
The paste is loaded into a centrifuge and whipped around really fast until the oil separates from the solid, which is later reused as fertilizer for the fields.
Then they wait.
Since consumers don’t generally like the raw version of olive oil, which is a cloudy mix, Rea pours the oil into a holding tank where it sits for 60 to 90 days to clarify.
"It’s great oil," he said. "Extra virgin olive oil is the cleanest, it’s the nicest, it’s the freshest and it’s the tastiest. It's unbelievable."
With his passion, I felt a bit like Thomas Haden Church to his Paul Giamatti from Sideways, discussing the virtues of Pinot Noir. I snack on cocktail olives and use olive oil to fry up chicken cutlets. I had no idea where it came from or why it tastes the way it does.
Rea waxes poetic about garlic-stuffed olives, and describes his oil as having a fruity beginning and a peppery aftertaste.
Who knew?
"The early harvest olive gives you the ability to have that grassy taste, that peppery finish. When it’s purple, it’s a very buttery taste, very mild," he said, pouring oil into tasting dishes and cutting a baguette. "The trick is combining the varietals when you harvest to get that blend you want. It’s kind of like blending wine."
I dipped and tasted. It was good. But, I couldn’t taste the pepper, an observation I should have kept to myself. I blamed it on an untested palette.
Rea had me try a spoonful of oil. I tasted the pepper then, and quickly washed it down with a swig of water.
He grows eight different olives, including calamata, mission, manzanillo, lechino, pendolino and grappelo. He puts together a dipping oil for bread, a regular extra virgin olive oil and a variety of infused oils including a lemon oil and a chili oil. Rea sells them separately or as gift sets, online for now and at his on-site retail location when it opens in the fall.
I complimented the pretty tasting plates placed in some of the gift sets and Rea told me all of the materials for the sets are from local businesses, right down to the boxes and the labels.
This year, the gift sets will expand to include oils, spreads and stuffed olives.
"You like martinis? These would be great in martinis," he said.
Speaking of liquor, Rea’s oils are already being used in the Valley at Sportsman’s. The Scottsdale wine bar uses the oils exclusively in its kitchen. Kai at the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort and Spa also uses a private label of the oil, and the executive chef at the Francisco Grande Hotel and Golf Resort in Casa Grande uses three of the oils in his recipes.
In addition, all of the Valley AJ’s Fine Foods began stocking its shelves this month with the mill's extra virgin olive oil. The oils are also available at the Gila Indian Center near Sacaton.
During the slow summer months while he waits for the fall harvest, Rea plans his family vacations and periodically checks on the olives, irrigating the trees about once a month. He and his family are set to visit Italy this summer, making a stop in Ceprano, where his parents are from.
He expects to plant about 500 more trees in the grove over the next three months. But, he doesn’t want to be a massive operation.
"My vision is to be a small boutique olive farm. That’s what I want to do," he said.
Rea also wants people to know that if they bring him olives from their trees in their yards, he’ll press them into oil, and split the batch.
"What’s going to be cool is if we can convince people to use our mill as a cooperative mill," Rea said, noting the average homeowner could walk away with a gallon of oil.
Responding to the astonished look on my face, he gave me a quick math lesson. One ton of olives can be squeezed for anywhere between 15 and 45 gallons of oil, depending on the type of olive. It takes about 20 trees to reach one ton of olives.
"Who would have thunk, right? Olive oil in Arizona," he said.
Not me.
Copyright 2005 The Arizona Republic.
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