November 2, 2026
During a brief window of time, taste new wines and freshly pressed olive oil
By Aakanksha Agarwal
During harvest, the oil flowing from Durant’s olive mill in the Dundee Hills bears little resemblance to the bottles found on a kitchen shelf. It’s cloudy, viscous and intensely peppery. The milling room smells “green, fresh and heavenly,” describes Paul Durant, master miller, second-generation winemaker and owner of Durant at Red Ridge Farms.
This is olio nuovo, the unfiltered first oil of the olive harvest. Durant at Red Ridge Farms celebrates it throughout November with tastings and food, and on Nov. 15, Community Milling Day, other olive growers bring their fruit to be pressed.
Mere days after this year’s milling day, another Oregon harvest takes the stage. Newveau Fest, a Newberg tasting event inspired by Beaujolais Nouveau, returns Nov. 20 with wineries pouring newly produced wines from this year’s harvest.
Both celebrations draw on European harvest traditions– Italy’s enthusiasm for freshly milled olive oil and France’s annual release of Beaujolais Nouveau.
The Durant family planted wine grapes in the Dundee Hills in 1973, when Oregon wine was itself an experiment. They began planting olives about three decades later, with little Oregon-specific knowledge to guide them.
TRIAL AND ERROR
Durant sees echoes of early Oregon viticulture in today’s olive industry. “They’re very analogous,” he notes. “There are a lot of unknowns.” Growing olives here recalls the trial-and-error years of Oregon wine– figuring out varieties, spacing, where and how to plant. “We’ve made the same or similar mistakes, especially in terms of the varieties being planted here. The Oregon wine industry is famous for collaboration, and we all want the olive industry to succeed the same way.”
When his parents Ken and Penny Durant planted roughly 2,000 olive trees in the early 2000s, there was “virtually nothing” available about growing olives in Western Oregon. Penny researched cultivars; Ken was willing to experiment. “My dad basically said, ‘Let’s just go for it and try.’”
OSU Extension’s response to Penny’s inquiry asking how olive trees might do in the Willamette Valley, Durant remembers, was essentially: “There’s no way.”
They planted anyway.
California cultivars proved poorly suited to the Northern Willamette Valley. Northern Italian varieties such as Leccino and Frantoio showed more promise. Location mattered more than expected– trees higher on the property fared better. “Looking back, some of it seems so obvious, but at the time it wasn’t,” explains Durant.
OLEA PROJECT
Oregon State University is now answering systematically what growers once approached through trial and error. Heather Stoven and horticulturist Neil Bell launched OSU’s Olea Project in 2017. At the North Willamette Research and Extension Center in Aurora, 420 trees representing 116 cultivars grow on a one-acre plot.
“When Neil and I started, we knew little about growing olives, and continue learning every day,” acknowledges Stoven, an associate professor of practice with OSU Extension.
Durant frames the central challenge in two parts: “What varieties are the most cold-hardy in Oregon? And then: They may be cold-hardy, but what do they produce?”
AN UNPLANNED FIELD TEST
In January 2024, a cold snap offered an opportunity to see how the trees held up. Temperatures stayed below 20 degrees Fahrenheit for nearly 20 hours and dipped as low as 15 degrees. Results varied widely– a few accessions showed no damage; others experienced severe dieback. Most landed somewhere in between, losing leaves before recovering. The hardest-hit trees didn’t fruit that year; others produced a good crop.
“This leads us to believe there are several candidates with potential in our climate,” Stoven reports.
One freeze isn’t enough to draw firm conclusions. The trees were already acclimated to winter conditions when the cold arrived, and Western Oregon has recorded temperatures below 15 degrees. Future cold events could reveal more. And Oregon’s questions differ from those in traditional olive-growing regions– existing research focuses on spring frost, but trees in the state don’t bloom until June, making winter freezes the primary concern.
“This trial is definitely unique because we have so many accessions growing together in such a cool climate,” Stoven observes.
GROWN IN OREGON
Picking before a hard freeze often means harvesting at a less mature stage than growers would in warmer climates. This contributes to the pronounced pungency of many Oregon oils.
“The viscosity of Oregon-grown olive oils is different,” Durant shares. “They’re just a little richer and thicker, and tend to be more on the spicy side.”
Arbequina ripens late in Oregon’s climate, producing a lighter, fruit-forward oil with notes of green banana and fresh-cut grass. Durant feels it’s better with pasta. Frantoio is heartier and more pungent, ideal with stews and meat. “You can have a little arsenal of olive oils suited to highlighting whatever you’re cooking.”
Oregon olive oil works alongside Oregon wine and Dungeness crab, over mushroom ravioli, even ice cream. “All those foods represent the Oregon bounty. It’s exciting to be included in that conversation.” Season shapes the oil’s character, too: Durant describes 2026 as a cool Willamette Valley year and expects that to show. “There absolutely is a vintage-to-vintage component to the flavor.”
LIMITED TIME
Durant prefers “miller” to “oilmaker.” The oil already exists inside the olive. The miller’s job is to extract it while preserving what the fruit has to offer. “Winemakers talk about trying to let the fruit stand out, and I think that’s even more true with olive oil millers because you really just get what the fruit will give you,” he states.
However, there is room for intervention. Millers can adjust how olives are crushed, how long the paste is mixed during malaxation (slow churning of crushed olive paste), and how the oil is separated– but the window for those decisions is only about two hours, compared to the months winemakers have to shape a wine.
“With olive oil, we can’t make a course correction after the fact the way you can after a wine has gone into barrel,” Durant adds. “Milling truly is taking what you have and trying not to mess it up.”
Last year OSU’s experimental orchard yielded enough for its first substantial milling– the single blend earned a bronze medal in the 2025 Los Angeles International Extra Virgin Olive Oil Competition. As trees mature and yields increase, OSU plans to harvest and mill cultivars separately, comparing their oils and how well-suited each variety is to Oregon’s climate.
YOUNG OIL
Olio nuovo captures oil at its youngest. Because it’s unfiltered, microscopic water droplets and olive particles remain suspended– intensifying pungency and pepperiness while shortening shelf life. Olio nuovo is best consumed within a few months.
“It’s such a beautiful product– so unique and fleeting,” describes Durant. “It just makes it taste incredibly fresh.”
Durant’s November celebration began after an Italian olive expert spent two harvest seasons with the family. He taught them that new oil in Italy wasn’t simply something to bottle– it was an occasion. People harvested together, brought their fruit to the mill and enjoyed the new oil. The expert encouraged the Durant family: “You need to do the same thing here. Open your mill. Let people come. Let them taste the oil with food.”
What started in 2009 as a two-day event has expanded into every weekend in November. “It’s a celebration of tradition and the new harvest, too,” adds Durant.
GREATER THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS
The collective spirit is most obvious on Community Milling Day. Growers arrive with hundreds of pounds of fruit or, Durant shares, “10 pounds in a coffee can from a backyard tree.” Olives are weighed, then milled together. Contributors receive oil in proportion to what they brought.
“People bring their olives, we drink a little sparkling wine, eat some good food, and watch those olives turn into oil. It turns what might be a very small backyard harvest into something people can actually experience as finished Oregon olive oil.”
YOUTH REVERED
Newveau Fest celebrates another version of the young Oregon harvest in Newberg. The processes could hardly be more different, but olio nuovo and nouveau wine share an immediacy: both offer a chance to taste the season while it’s still unfolding. Durant explained, “I think they’re beautiful partners. You’re tasting something freshly created. It has a vibrancy that only comes with something so young.”
MORE THAN A NICHE?
Stoven doesn’t expect Oregon to compete with California or Mediterranean regions on volume. “Oregon olives are best suited as a value-added, niche industry,” she declares. Though low water needs and demand for locally grown food might offer more advantages.
Durant thinks growth depends on larger plantings. If established farmers begin adding olives, greater volume could support more mills and commercial operations. “I don’t think it’s a matter of if, but when.”
Similar to wine, will olive oil become part of Oregon’s identity? “Oh boy,” Durant exclaims. “I’m not sure that’ll happen in my lifetime.” But the precedent is there. Oregon produces relatively little wine globally, yet Pinot Noir has built a reputation far beyond its borders. “We could be a very small olive oil producer but have a large footprint, as we do in wine.”
For now, November offers a glimpse: new wines from the current vintage flow as olives from the same harvest are milled.
The wine will continue to evolve. Olio nuovo is more fleeting. “It’s here,” Durant said. “And then it’s gone.”
Don’t miss it.
Olio Nuovo Festival
Every weekend in November
Durant at Red Ridge Farms
5510 N.E. Breyman Orchards Rd., Dayton
(503) 864-2000
durantoregon.com
durantoregon.com/pages/olio-nuovo-festival
Newveau Fest
Nov. 20, 4 to 9 p.m.
306 N. Main St., Newberg
newveaufest.com
Aakanksha Agarwal is a wine, travel and lifestyle writer from India. Formerly a Bollywood stylist, she now resides in the U.S., embracing writing full-time while juggling family life and indulging in her passions for cuisine, literature and wanderlust.
Dining and Cooking