I’ve enjoyed preparing good food for as long as I’ve referred to myself as “a nice Italian girl from South Jersey.” Even though Italian food is in my genes, I never realized what I was missing until I tasted freshly milled olive oil. During a holiday trip to Italy, Malcolm and I were staying at a B&B east of Naples. On the last morning of our visit, our delightful hostess invited us to taste her family’s olive oil. Milled just the night before, from olives growing on 1,000-year-old trees, this oil was green, aromatic, and lively on the tongue. I had never tasted anything like it.
The flavor was to die for.
So started our mission to bring olives to our farm. After two years of blind tastings and two more years of agricultural hurdles, the young trees arrived from Sicily on Christmas Eve. It would be another three years before we celebrated our first modest harvest. During that time, we toured small family farms in Southern Italy and Sicily, learning everything we could about tending our trees and hand-harvesting the olives to protect their authentic Sicilian flavor.
Bondolio’s signature olive oil is a harmonious blend of Nocellara, Cerasuola, and the wonderfully buttery Biancollila olives. They have an ancestral lineage that can be traced to the Greeks, who brought olive trees to Sicily over 2,000 years ago.
The quality of our oil is due in no small part to the Sicilian-like warm summers, semi-arid conditions, and rich soil of California’s San Joaquin Valley. Here, the natural landscape is like Sicily’s, with flora of prickly pear cactus, palms trees, and eucalyptus. We like to believe Bondolio’s olive trees have found a comfortable, familiar home in the soil of Winters, California.
So that our oil retains its complex, authentically Sicilian notes, we harvest the olives by hand when they are just right, and they go from tree to bottle in less than 90 minutes. The taste profile is fruity, buttery, and delightfully green on the palate with a peppery finish – what we call the “smile taste.”
Bondolio’s award-winning extra virgin olive oil is an elegant, aromatic blend that is equally at home in simple, comfort meals as it is in special occasion dishes. In 2019, Bondolio won Best of Show at the California State Fair and a Gold Medal at the New York International Olive Oil Competition.
We believe in being good stewards of the earth and have always practiced sustainable, organic, old world farming methods. In 2019, Bondolio officially achieved organic certification.
We are delighted to share this exquisite oil with you.
From our farm to your table, enjoy!
