- [Announcer] Production funding for "American Grown" provided by James G. Parker Insurance.

Protecting agribusiness in the Valley for over 40 years.

Brandt Professional Agriculture.

Discovering manufacturing and supplying the Ag inputs that support the heroes that work hard to feed a hungry world every day.

By unWired Broadband.

Today's Internet for rural central California.

Keeping Valley Ag connected since 2003.

By Hodges Electric.

Trusted by builders to wire thousands of Valley homes, now bringing that trust direct to you.

By Wawona Frozen Foods.

Fruit as it should be.

Family-owned since 1963.

By Harris Farms, a legacy of growing.

By Harrison Co., providing family farms insight to make the best possible financial decisions.

And by Valley Air Conditioning and Repair, family owned for over 50 years, dedicated to supporting Valley agriculture and families that grow food for the nation.

(dramatic music) (gentle music) - [Jeff] Olive oil is everywhere now.

In home kitchens, on restaurant tables, drizzled, poured, finished, and talked about like we all suddenly became experts.

It's become shorthand for eating better, cooking cleaner, living longer.

But for something so familiar, olive oil is still one of the most misunderstood foods we buy, because not all olive oil is the same.

- Extra virgin grade olive oil is the best olive oil.

It's the creme de la creme.

- [Jeff] And the difference between what's truly great, and what just looks great on a shelf, is wider than most people think.

Some oils are fresh, alive with flavor.

Others have traveled thousands of miles, sat for months, sometimes years, before they ever reach your plate.

And yet, to the average consumer, they all wear the same label, extra virgin.

So how do you know what you're really tasting?

How do you know if the olive oil you're buying is doing what it's supposed to do?

In the kitchen, and for your body?

- I learned that olive oil is actually a very mysterious product, even though most of us do have it in our kitchen.

- [Jeff] The truth is, olive oil isn't just an ingredient.

It's an agricultural product.

And like wine, coffee, or produce, how it's grown, harvested, milled, and handled matters.

(upbeat music) And here, in California's Central Valley, a place better known for feeding the nation than redefining flavor, one olive oil producer is standing out.

(upbeat music) - Everything that we do, we really wanna hone in on what makes this product special and great.

- [Jeff] At the heart of this story is the Ricchiuti family, and their acclaimed brand, Enzo Olive Oil, a 100% estate grown USDA organic extra virgin olive oil made entirely on their own land, with olives harvested and milled from grove to bottle, under their watchful eye.

- We wanna make excellent extra virgin olive oil.

- [Jeff] Their journey spans generations, a family rooted in this land, carrying forward centuries old traditions, while pushing craftsmanship to new heights.

- I trained for two years to professionally taste olive oil.

- [Jeff] Enzo's Oils have earned widespread recognition and national awards for their quality, flavor, and purity.

And now in a bold new chapter, they've opened Enzo's Table, a state-of-the-art stop in Clovis, California, a place where community, culture, and exceptional olive oil converge.

- As we've moved into our new space, really wanted to celebrate the things that we grow, and the things that we make.

- [Jeff] But this is more than a local success story.

Olive oil has been made for thousands of years in places like the ancient fields of the Adriatic, where on the island of Hvar, Croatia, centuries old groves meet the passion of a new generation.

- This is local cultivar here from Croatia, from island of Korcula.

- [Jeff] There on some of the oldest agricultural soils on Earth, another young olive oil producer is making a name on the global stage, blending time-tested tradition, with a modern mindset.

- [Toma] Tree here, you can see the crazy production of Arbequina.

- [Jeff] These stories aren't just about oil.

They're about people, the growers, the traditions they uphold, and one timeless question.

What is great olive oil really taste like?

And what does it take to make it?

(upbeat music) (classical music) - So P-R farms was started by my grandfather, and my dad, back in, it was incorporated in 1963.

And at that time, it was predominantly a stone fruit company.

Packing peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots.

And over time, it has shifted to becoming now what today is a more of an almond company, vertically integrated with, we're growing, we're harvesting, we're hulling and shelling, processing, and then shipping globally.

And we're over two different counties in Fresno and Madera County.

Ever since I was a little kid, I always knew that I wanted to be part of the family business.

I mean, I remember coming to work in third grade.

And my first job was putting in tray pack line, putting tray packs in on the tray pack line.

And then I would, I got elevated to a box stacker, and different jobs in the packing house when I was in elementary school.

And then slowly, given more and more responsibilities as I got older in the packing house.

And to the point where I was, when I was in high school, and college, I was kind of running the packing house during the summers, until I'd have to go back to school, or back for sports practice or something like that.

So at every point in my childhood, every summer was connected through the family business in one way or the other.

(gentle music) - Yeah, I mean, I like to call myself an olive oil maker.

I guess the technical title would be olive miller, because basically we're taking olives, we're crushing 'em up, much like milling grain or some other product.

But I like olive oil maker.

Feels a little more like something you can understand.

I've been making olive oil for 12 years.

Well, like many stories start, I spent a year in Italy, and I fell in love with olive oil.

I was educated about olive oil in Italy.

I actually learned while I was there in a school program that I knew literally nothing about olive oil, even though it's a product I had in my pantry since a child.

But I learned that olive oil is actually a very mysterious product, even though most of us do have it in our kitchen.

So that really captured my attention.

And being from California, it turned out to be a pretty good bet to focus my studies on olive oil production, because California has a thriving industry right now.

- My dad has been on the Ag Foundation board at Fresno State.

And so Fresno State at that point in time was one of the newer players in planting a test block of super high density olives.

And so he had been watching that, and we had been talking about it.

And so at that meeting, what I pitched was transitioning away from stone fruit, growing the almond business, and carving out this olive oil niche.

And so in 2008, my grandfather was still around at that point, we made that a collective decision to move forward with that plan.

And so we planted our first olive trees in the fall of 2008.

And then in the fall of 2011, we had our first crush.

It was actually like two days before Thanksgiving of that year.

And the rest is history.

- [Jeff] Where's the name Enzo come from?

- So the name Enzo and Enzo Olive Oil company comes from my great-grandfather, who I am named after.

So his name is Vincenzo Ricchiuti.

And I'm Vincent Ricchiuti.

And so we thought it was a cool time, a way to honor one of the founding members of the family business, and the man that came to the United States to give us these opportunities.

And then myself as the next generation, it was a nice tie-in, we thought, bookend way to name the company.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) - [Jeff] Half a world away, another young olive grower shares the same vision as Vincent Ricchiuti.

A deep respect for the land, an obsession with quality, and a relentless drive to produce the best extra virgin olive oil possible.

Here, on the island of Hvar, those values are rooted in the Stari Grad Plain, one of the oldest continuously farmed agricultural landscapes in the world.

- Time that I brought these trophies from New York International Olive Oil Competition, to show especially for you.

- [Jeff] These fields were first laid out by the ancient Greeks more than 2,500 years ago.

A living grid of stone walls, vineyards, and olive trees that still shape life on the island today.

(gentle music) For generations, a small family farm has tended olives here, some trees older than nations themselves.

Today, that legacy is carried forward by Toma Makjanic, a new generation producer with old-world patience.

Toma studies his trees and harvests with intention, and crafts oils that reflect both history and place under his family's label, MMuje.

We traveled to Hvar to walk these fields with Toma, to learn from his passion, and to taste the story he's pouring into every bottle.

- So this is one of our oldest orchards.

It's 24 years old.

In comparison with the other orchards, this one is special because it has so many different cultivars, varieties, of olive trees.

You will see that later.

We are a specialist at grafting trees.

We grafted, who knows how many thousands of olive trees.

- [Jeff] To find the right mix, to find the right- - To put the cultivar, the variety that is best for that place.

Because each field is different.

Microclimate is very important in olive tree cultivation.

So you have to know your place, your soil, to give the best cultivar a chance to give it some maximum genetic potential.

(classical music) - [Jeff] When you zoom out, and look at the world of olive oil, there's a clear picture of where the biggest production happens, and where reputation for quality is being built.

Spain is by far the largest olive oil producer on the planet, responsible for roughly a quarter of global output.

With Italy, Greece, Turkiye, and Tunisia rounding out the biggest producers.

This isn't the whole story though, because volume and quality aren't always the same thing.

Much of the olive oil you see on supermarket shelves, even some of the premium brands, comes from large operations that are built to move huge quantities of oil.

That scale can mean efficiency, but it also means they're often tied to a production rhythm that can't always prioritize the incredibly tight timing that top-tier extra virgin olive oil demands.

The moment olives are picked, to the moment they're pressed, can literally make or break the flavor and chemical quality that define great oil.

That's where places like Croatia, and producers like Toma Makjanic are rewriting the script.

Croatian olive growers are still small on the map in terms of sheer output, but on the world stage of quality, they are consistently punching above their weight.

At the New York International Olive Oil competition, widely regarded as the premier global quality contest for extra virgin olive oils, Croatian producers have been earning significant recognition year after year, winning dozens of gold and silver awards against producers from all over the world.

It's more than just trophies.

These wins signal that when focus is on freshness, attention to harvest timing, and small batch care, these oils can compete with, and often beat oils from much larger producing countries.

And that's exactly where Toma and growers like him fit into the story.

Not chasing the biggest numbers, but striving for the best extra virgin olive oil the world has ever tasted.

- Every cultivar, variety, has a different olive oil profile.

So in case you are making a blend, you have to know what you are doing, because one has a bit of strong aromas, like fruity aromas, other one has a bitterness, the other one is more spicy.

And the best olive oil is one that is balanced, that has a harmony of all these flavors.

And you can feel everything, but nothing is too much.

(gentle music) - When we started Enzo, we knew nothing.

And I went to Italy with my maternal grandfather, Tony Petrizzino, in 2010.

And the goal was, he was gonna be one of my interpreters on the trip to help me navigate the business aspect.

'Cause the goal was to meet with different olive oil producers, different milling manufacturers of the companies that make the machinery to make the olive oil.

So in the spring of 2010, the two of us set out on a three-week journey together, which was a lot of fun to be able to spend that much time with your grandfather in the country that he grew up and was born in.

And so we traveled all over the place.

We visited different family members along the way, and got to really spend a lot of time with the actual machinery manufacturing companies, and got to see how they make the machines and, 'cause we're making a decision at that point of who we're gonna be buying this milling equipment from.

And it's gonna be a long partnership.

We ended up buying Amenduni line from a region of Italy that my family is from, which is Puglia.

They're headquartered in Bari, which my father's side of the family is 30 minutes from there, to the north of Bari in a town called Bisceglie.

- The industry has been growing pretty rapidly for the last 20 years.

And part of that has to do with some of the new style of olive oil planting, that California has really embraced.

This super high density planting, where the olive trees are planted quite close together so we can get more trees per acre, and they can be machine-harvested, they can be machine-pruned.

So it really makes olive oil a possibility to make a business out of.

And so those styles of planting really started going in, in about 20 years ago.

In fact, Fresno State University here in the San Joaquin Valley was I think, one of the very first test sites in California that planted that style of planting.

And so that opened up a whole world of possibilities.

And of course, the Central Valley can grow anything.

And turns out olives are a fantastic crop for this area.

They're very drought tolerant, they don't require a lot of water.

So in a drought and water-restricted area such as this, it is a fantastic crop to grow.

- On the milling side of olive oil, we didn't know what we didn't know.

And so when we had that first crush, I remember sitting there at the end of the day, both not knowing what to do with my emotions, right?

We had just made olive oil for the very first time, but that day, nothing went right.

Like everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong in that first day.

And I remember thinking like, "My life is over!"

Like this is, what did I just get our family into?

What have we done?

But each day we kept figuring things out, and how to improve the process.

We learned, we tried to use some almond equipment as a conveyance for the olives.

And we very quickly learned on that first day that that wasn't a very good idea.

But we couldn't do anything, other than fight through it for that season.

But the moment that that season was over, we placed a PO to get the correct machinery over for the other conveyance.

So that very second year was already better than the first just by a couple of pieces of equipment.

And over time, we've just, the culture of our milling team is research-based and figuring it out.

And we want to make sure that we make, we are making the best olive oil possible.

And so we have to challenge the norms, right?

So we're challenging what our Italian manufacturers are telling us about the equipment.

And our head miller, her name is Kathryn, and her and I, she's been milling with us for almost 10 years.

And her and I's balance together is, she is trying to make the best olive oil in the world.

I'm trying to make olive oil at a profit.

And so, those two things have to come together, and be a great marriage and we've done a really good job of that and figuring out a way to be able to have both.

Have really high quality, but also create a yield that makes us profitable.

(gentle music) - [Jeff] What connects Enzo in California to MMY here in Croatia isn't geography, it's intent.

MM Uje is a small, estate-focused producer, known for not scale, but for precision.

Everything here is built around control.

The varieties they grow, the moment they harvest, and the way each oil is crafted in the mill.

Rather than chasing a single signature olive, Toma treats olive oil more like a composition, layering flavors, balancing intensity, and building blends that are deliberate and expressive.

And that philosophy starts long before the olives ever reach the press.

Here, innovation doesn't come from bigger equipment, or faster output, it comes from the trees themselves.

Toma has developed a hands-on approach that allows him to experiment, adapt, and fine-tune his oils year after year.

It's one of the most surprising things you'll see in an olive grove.

A single tree producing multiple varieties of olives, each contributing something different to the final blend.

And it all begins with a knife, a graft, and a deep understanding of how olive oil is made, from the inside out.

- The trunk from a cultivar called Oblica.

And then you have three primary scaffolds.

And what is important that on these primary scaffolds, you have grafts, you see different grafts.

- [Jeff] Yeah.

- So each primary scaffold has different cultivar.

- [Jeff] Yeah.

- On this side, we have Arbequina, Spanish cultivar.

And then on this side here, we have Chemlali from Tunis.

It's completely different cultivar, and we don't have it- - [Jeff] I don't think a lot of people know that you can have three or four different- - You can have- - [Jeff] Varieties of olive on one tree if you graft.

- I can have 50 if I wanted.

I can graft each branch.

We are looking to end with harvest around 3:00 PM.

Because everybody finish with harvest around 5:00 PM.

And then what happens, you come to olive oil mill, and there is a crazy queue with people.

Everybody wants to make their olive oil, but it is just a big queue.

So you have to wait sometimes until late in the evening.

So what I do, I call my friend at the olive mill, I tell him I'm coming around 3:00.

Is the mill free for me?

Yes, it is.

I come and I go straight in the mill.

- That's smart.

That's smart.

- Yeah.

That's what my mentor, Dr Ivica Vlatkovic, from Novigrad here told me, one of the first things that I started to make, and it was the best thing ever.

Because you lose maybe two hours of harvest, but you get much more.

- We crush the whole olive.

Pit and everything gets crushed up.

And then that crushed up fruit matter, which we call olive paste.

The Italians actually call it pasta, like it's a dough, but it gets pushed inside, pumped inside into a giant mixer.

The fancy word we use is a malaxer, but it's really just a giant mixing chamber.

I kind of like to think of it as a giant KitchenAid mixer.

And in this step of the processing, the mashed up olive paste is getting mixed and kneaded, and massaged.

And we keep it perfectly climate-controlled so we can control the temperature, so it's never gets too warm.

And in that process what's happening is the massaging and the kneading is breaking down the cell walls of the fruit so that the oil droplets can break free, find each other and coalesce together.

'Cause what we're really doing during olive oil making is extracting the already existing oil that's in the fruit.

- When you're at the grocery store, when you're shopping for an olive oil, looking for that harvest state is super important.

Looking for olive oil that is in a dark glass.

Looking for the country of origin, where it's coming from.

These are all the different things that you can kind of piece together when looking at an olive oil label, to understand the quality of that olive oil.

Also, price point.

If a price seems too good to be true when it comes to olive oil, it probably is.

And that's not to say that olive oil should be $50 a bottle.

It doesn't need to be that, at that price point for it to be good.

But it also should not be six, seven, or $8 a bottle, right?

So you have to find that equilibrium and understand, and really kind of do a little bit of research.

And once you find a brand that you love, and you trust, and you like the flavor, stick with it.

But when you take that olive oil home as well, remember, it should be fresh, it should be vibrant.

When you pop open that lid, if it smells off, if it smells rancid, if it smells not like an olive should smell, then you probably have something that you should not be putting into your body, and you should be focusing on something that you should.

- [Jeff] In Clovis, California, the passion behind Enzo's Olive Oil now has a front door.

Enzo's Table sits on a busy corner, but what happens inside feels anything but rushed.

In a place built from years of work, and generations of tradition, a space where the Ricchiuti family shares not just olive oil, but their story.

People stop in for coffee, gather around the wine bar, linger a little longer than they planned.

It's quickly becoming more than a store.

It's a place that feels like home.

And in many ways, it reflects the same spirit we've seen across the world in Croatia.

Olive oil is made everywhere.

It's produced in massive quantities, and often misunderstood as just another commodity.

But in the hands of producers like Vincent and Toma, it becomes something else entirely.

A reflection of care, timing, knowledge, and pride.

This is where the real value of extra virgin olive oil lives.

In local producers, in small batches, and people who treat food as both an art, and a science.

Because at its best, agriculture has always been about this.

Growing food with intention, sharing it with people, and making something that not only tastes good, but is truly good for you.

- [Jeff] What do you think?

Did the guy that make that knows what he's doing?

- Probably.

(Jeff laughing) (bright music) - [Announcer] Production funding for "American Grown" provided by James G. Parker Insurance, protecting agribusiness in the Valley for over 40 years.

Brandt Professional Agriculture, discovering manufacturing, and supplying the Ag inputs that support the heroes that work hard to feed a hungry world every day.

By unWired Broadband.

Today's Internet for rural central California.

Keeping Valley Ag connected since 2003.

By Hodges Electric, trusted by builders to wire thousands of Valley homes.

Now bringing that trust direct to you.

By Wawona Frozen Foods, fruit as it should be.

Family owned since 1963.

By Harris Farms, a legacy of growing.

By Harrison Co., providing family farms insight to make the best possible financial decisions.

And by Valley Air Conditioning and Repair, family owned for over 50 years.

Dedicated to supporting Valley agriculture and families that grow food for the nation.

(dramatic music)