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!
The time has come—we’re ready to release the fresh oil from our latest harvest! You’ll find it in the online shop:
This is officially your first opportunity, outside of our annual subscription program, to taste olive oil produced on the Fat Gold mill. We think it’s the best we’ve ever made.
Here are Kathryn’s tasting notes for this year’s flagship oils:
Fat Gold Standard is bold and peppery, made from frantoio olives. This oil evokes fresh herbs, matcha, and artichoke, and it has a robust, spicy finish. Everything about it is “big,” so it stands toe-to-toe to flavorful, hearty foods: soups, stews, meat, pasta, and especially tomato sauce.
Fat Gold Blue is fragrant and fruity, bursting with green tomato, almond, arugula, and fresh grass. This year, it’s made from a blend of arbequina and picual olives, the latter variety adding an extra oomph of aroma. Since it has tons of fruity flavor without a bitter edge, Fat Gold Blue really shines with lighter, simpler food. It’s lovely with salad, vegetables, and seafood.
That covers flavor; there’s also chemistry.
We talk a lot about olive oil’s antioxidant biophenols; it seems like more and more people are becoming aware of their profound health benefits. When we receive results from the olive oil lab—yes, there’s an olive oil lab—biophenols are measured in mg/kg. A reading of 200 would be considered “low,” while a reading above 400 would be considered “high.” You can taste the difference! An oil below 200 would taste soft, while an oil above 400 would definitely produce a tickle at the back of your throat—even a cough.
Both of our flagship oils came back with higher biophenol readings than their predecessors last year. Fat Gold Standard came in at 550, Fat Gold Blue at 480. Those are great numbers!
(A note for annual subscribers: the koroneiki you received in December came in at 520.)
Note that higher is not always better, simply because, above a certain level, the “bite” of the biophenols tends to overwhelm the flavor of the oil, and you might find yourself wondering, “Is this food… or medicine?”
Fat Gold is a craft food product, not an industrial one; we can’t make it exactly the same every year, or even every day. With the oils we produce for annual subscribers, we embrace that variability: sometimes they are a bit wild! For these two flagship offerings, we do have profiles we aim for every year, and this year, we hit them right on target.
Here’s a tip for readers in the San Francisco Bay Area:
Historically, we have not sold too much olive oil directly to restaurant kitchens. Even chefs who loved Fat Gold always had to admit it was pretty pricey, compared to the alternatives.
One of our favorite customers has been Sfizio, a cool, comfortable restaurant in the Rockridge neighborhood of Berkeley and Oakland where founder and chef Matt Solimano has used Fat Gold as a finishing oil on his terrific pasta.
This year, the introduction of the Fat Gold mill opened up some new possibilities in terms of the cost of our production. We milled a couple batches expressly for restaurants, working with food-friendly olive varieties, aiming for a price point that might be workable.
Well, in an exciting development, Sfizio now uses Fat Gold not just for finishing, but for everything! This is especially satisfying because Matt has created such a warm, friendly, neighborhood-y place. It’s that perfect Bay Area combination: super high-quality seasonal food delivered without a lick of pretense.
Nice pic courtesy Sfizio’s Instagram account
If you live in the Bay Area, especially the East Bay, give Sfizio a try. The space is inviting, the food is delicious, and the price is right. There are mostly no reservations; just walk up. They’ll serve you a drink while you wait. Maybe we’ll see you there.
From Oakland,
—Kathryn, Robin, and Bryan
P.S. Thanks to you, our first-ever Big Fat Gold Sale was a huge success! It had a fun, frantic feeling, and we will definitely do it again next year.