This is an archived edition of our Field Report email newsletter. You can sign up at the bottom of the page!

Greetings from Fat Gold!

We write with big news, some of the biggest in this little olive oil company’s whole history:

We bought an olive mill!

It is being manufactured in Italy now; it is a beautiful piece of machinery; it is our biggest investment ever, by a wide margin; and we’ll give you the whole story, but first, we have to tell you about some new items on sale.

We’ve got some great stuff newly available in the Fat Gold online shop.

Here’s the first thing we’ve ever offered that’s not a tin of oil: a two-ingredient lip balm made by our great friend Jana Kinsman, who runs the urban beekeeping project Bike a Bee in Chicago. Jana makes this balm from Fat Gold and ultra-pure cappings wax from her hives. Kathryn, a lip balm junkie, thinks it’s the best ever made; she loves that it has no weird flavor or scent.

Next, we have a small quantity of extra tins from our recent shipments to annual subscribers: March’s frantoio and June’s hojiblanca/picual. These oils are, as always, limited editions, so once these tins sell out, that’s it.

The hojiblanca/picual tins are all dented, and discounted accordingly, but the oil inside is pristine. Many subscribers told us it was their favorite we’ve ever sent.

The best way to learn about these oils is to watch the short videos we recorded about them. You’ll find those here.

Finally, our beloved picholine is still delicious, but getting long in the tooth, so it really must go. We’re offering this great oil at a deep discount, so please, snatch it up and pour it out.

Now, about that mill!

For those of you who don’t know, the mill is the machine that accepts fresh olives, grinds them up, and extracts their oil. In our Guide to Extra Virgin Olive Oil, we detail all its components, with example videos included. It’s a good orientation.

One of Fat Gold’s greatest strengths is Kathryn’s expertise as a miller—she has operated mills of all sizes, over many years, on several continents. But she’s never had her OWN mill.

The great puzzle of our harvests, for many years now, has been matching batches of olives to available mills. Is this mill open on that day? What about next week? Is it too far to drive the olives? Will its operator follow Kathryn’s instructions carefully?

We’ve managed that puzzle for years now, and some of those mill owners and operators have become great friends and trusted collaborators. Even so, the prospect of changing the game, turning it from a puzzle into a process—something we can truly own and perfect—is dazzling.

Our mill is being manufactured by Italy’s MORI-TEM. Kathryn, along with many of her peers, believes they currently make the best mills in the world, with a host of clever, useful features that produce better olive oil.

Big questions remain, chief among them: will the mill arrive, and will we be able to install it, in time for this year’s harvest? We are hoping the answer is “yes,” but of course we won’t know for sure until the mill’s malaxers fill up and its centrifuge whirrs and Fat Gold emerges.

We’ll have more to report as we go; this upcoming season will be uniquely exciting and challenging.

But right now, above all, we have to say thank you. If you’re a Fat Gold subscriber or customer, it’s on your behalf that this machine is now being manufactured in Tuscany. We started this company five years ago. Purchasing a mill was a big decision for us, but, in the end, not a difficult one; that’s because your support has only grown, and grown, and grown.

Fat Gold is not for hoarding!

–Kathryn, Robin, and Bryan

P.S. Just think, every lip balm you buy pays for 0.001% of the mill…