Luretík Olive Oil Aims to Challenge Italy’s Finest (2024)

When Elise Magistro purchased a “patch of dirt” off of Alamo Pintado Road in the heart of the Santa Ynez Valley in 2012, there was just one thing on her mind. “My goal was to produce an oil that would go toe-to-toe with the best Italian ones,” said Magistro, who now sells three types — one delicate, one medium-fruity, and one more robust — under the name Luretík Olive Oil.

Though the timing roughly coincided with her retirement from teaching Italian at top California universities, Magistro’s quest is really the culmination of a lifelong fascination that started when she first visited Italy at age 19. “All I needed was that first trip,” said Magistro, who’s since lived there at times, visited a few times every year, and even taken olive oil growing and production classes there. “I was most interested in the whole olive oil thing.”

There’s a familial link as well. Her father’s side is Sicilian, while her mother’s heritage is French-Basque, which is where the name “Luretík” comes from, meaning, “as from this earth.” And even the last name of her husband, Joe Baumgaertner, who still works as a physical therapist down in Pomona, translates from German to “tree gardener.”

The first 50 trees that Magistro planted on her rolling hills — which are just over the crest from Ballard Canyon — excelled. “The olives just took off here,” she said. So, they planted more and more of nine varieties of olive, just reaching 1,000 trees on the day that I visited in early May.

The first commercial harvest of olives for oil came in 2022. To process the fruit, Magistro brings the olives north to a certified organic miller in San Ardo, right off of 101 north of Paso Robles. (The Santa Ynez milling facility that many wineries and other olive growers used for years lost its organic certification a while back and then was recently sold.)

“What you’re looking for in all of this is freshness — it’s fruit juice,” said Magistro, who emphasized the need to use oils early and often to experience their maximum flavor and health benefits. “Even in ideal conditions, in two years, the oil will have lost its pop.”

Luretík’s three olive oils include the Toscana, a blend of Frantoio and Pendolino varieties that is the most mild, with grassy, citrusy, green almond flavors, ideal for finishing fish, chicken, or greens. The Sicily, a blend of Nocellara del Belice and Cerasuola, covers the middle ground, at once fruity, spicy with white pepper, and bitter in wild herb notes, good for drizzling on pasta, pizza, and fresh cheeses. And the most robust — although nowhere near as aggressive as some of the super-potent oils being produced these days — is the Meridione, which combines Coralina, Carolea, and Cerignola olives to amp up the bitterness and spiciness without going over the top. Magistro recommends this one on stews and beef dishes, but I’ve also been enjoying it poured over cottage cheese with flaky sea salt for breakfast.

Of course, each vintage may deliver different expressions for these oils, based on how the olives perform over the season. “It’s just like wine,” said Magistro. “It’s not predictable.”

The bottles cost about $25 for 250 mL or $48 for 500 mL, and that latter quantity should last about a month even with ample daily usage, which Magistro reminds me is far longer than a bottle of similarly priced wine. And these hand-grown, hand-harvested, handmade oils are packed with nutritious polyphenols — sometimes potent enough to make you cough a bit as you sample them.

“It’s the best possible thing for you — it’s great for you; it’s great for your kids,” she said. “We use olive oil for everything.”

Aside from Global Gardens and vineyards that also grow olives, Magistro isn’t aware of any other estate-grown commercial olive oil producers in Santa Barbara County. But she did say that Paso Robles is gaining steam as one of the state’s prime oil regions, and other wine regions like Temecula and Napa are also relative hotbeds for the product.

That shouldn’t matter much for Santa Barbarans seeking a delicious, artisanal source of olive oil, for Magistro is already going toe-to-toe with Italy’s best. In the 2024 Los Angeles International Extra-Virgin Olive Oil Competition, considered one of the top four such shows in the world, all three of Luretík’s oils took gold medals, and the Sicily won both “best in class” and “best in show” against nearly 500 oils from 15 different countries. More recently, the brand won a gold medal at the New York International Olive Oil Competition, a gold and double gold in Athens, and are awaiting results from Japan’s contest, rounding out the big four contests.

After I spent an hour speaking to Magistro in her kitchen, sampling the oils atop the neutral base of boiled potato pieces (and realizing that her son-in-law is my cousin’s close friend), she emailed me to finish her thoughts.

“I suppose I could have simplified the whole question of ‘What makes a quality extra-virgin’” by simply responding: ‘Knowledgeable farmer, healthy olives, clean mill, and master miller,’ because those are the essentials,” wrote Magistro. “But what makes an oil really special is everything in between, with the moment of harvest being perhaps the most critical.”

See luretik.com.