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’ve just released the newest edition of Fat Gold Blue. This oil, milled from arbequina olives, is delicate and floral—fresh from the 2022 harvest.
It’s available immediately in the online shop.
We are a small-batch producer, and our batches are never exactly the same. We think this is a good thing: it reflects the real variability in fruit, weather, logistics, and more.
Plus, it gives us something to talk about! Instead of saying “here’s the same old Blue,” we can tell you: this batch is extra delicate, which makes it especially useful in cooking and baking—all those recipes that insist you need to use a “mild” or “neutral” oil. (Remember, you can substitute olive oil for the oil in just about any baking recipe, as well as any baking mix.)
If you cook or bake with our 2022 Standard, you’ll taste its robust olive-y flavor coming through—not a bad thing, necessarily, especially if you love that flavor, and/or you’re cooking something robust. However, this year’s Blue is more versatile: perfect for the gentle flavors of spring. Kathryn detects notes of fresh cream, dried flowers, ripe apple, and walnut.
Here at Fat Gold HQ, we’re pouring Fat Gold Blue over asparagus and fava beans, which have finally arrived after being delayed by all the rain.
We’re also thinking about baking a cake! A while back, an annual subscriber mailed us a very sweet note, hand-written, enclosing a photocopy of a recipe for an olive oil cake she dubbed “the cake of my life”. You’ll find this recipe on page 198 of Caroline Fidanza’s Saltie—and we can confirm, it’s terrific!
If you’ve placed an order in the past couple of months, or if you’re an annual subscriber, you’ve received a shipment in our new box:
This box is custom-made for Fat Gold. It protects our tins from dents, AND it takes up less space than our old box, AND it’s easier to pack. The “unboxing” experience is also vastly improved; instead of digging your olive oil out of a tangle of packing material, you’ll find it presented for instant access—almost framed.
We are in spring cleaning mode, tidying up our workspaces in the Bay Area and the San Joaquin Valley. The harvest is still a long way off, but this will be the most pivotal October and November in our history, so we are already thinking about it. (For more on that, see this previous Field Report about our new mill.) All across California, the olive trees have pushed out their buds; in a few more weeks, they’ll be flowering.
Thanks for following along!
–Robin, Kathryn, and Bryan