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| Meet the Family | |||
| Our Family and Ranch | |||
| Allure Estates is a small family farm located on the California Central Coast near the town of Templeton, halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco and 25 miles from the Pacific coast. It is owned and operated by Laurie and Alex Alexiev and our four kids (Renee, 18, Alex, 14, Eric, 12 and John, 5) with the help of our many friends. Having started out primarily as an effort to improve the esthetics of a particularly unappealing, weed-overgrown part of our property six years ago, it has evolved into a productive, if tiny, family ranch dedicated to the production of Tuscan-style extra-virgin olive oil and premium varietal wine vinegar. It will never be a large commercial enterprise, since we do not intend to produce more oil or vinegar than we can grow ourselves. But, within the constraints of our size, we aim to make the best olive oil and vinegar we possibly can. For a fun rant about the initial planting written up by Laurie see, Adventures in a Pile of Dirt (While there, definitely peruse The Gilded Fork site. For anyone passionate about food, and wine and enjoying life, make this site a daily visit.) For a decidedly more jaundiced view of the same, click here to see our son Eric, The Orchard’s Poet version, written at 11 years old, Olive Orchard. |
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| Our Olive Grove | |||
| Our ranch has close to perfect soil and climatic conditions for growing olive trees and grapes. We are located in a unique microclimate known as the Templeton Gap, which brings moist marine air through a gap in the coastal Santa Lucia range and guarantees hot sunny days and cool nights throughout the season. It is not unusual at all for the difference of our day and night temperatures even in the summer to be 50 degrees. Our soil is what viticulturists call calcareous – a rather poor, rocky, limestone-based soil that is ideal for olives and grapevines, but for little else. Our grove has approximately 800 trees on four-plus acres, spaced 12 feet by 20. Of the four Tuscan varietals we grow, Leccino and Frantoio cultivars make up 80% and Pendolino and Maurino the rest 20%. The latter two are known as good pollinators and are interspersed among the former to help with pollination, which is normally wind-carried. We also have two dozen Kalamata, Arbequina and Canino trees that we use mostly for table olives for family and friends. The trees are drip-irrigated between June and October and hand-pruned to allow sun and air to circulate through the tree every year. At full maturity, usually reached when the trees are 8 to 10 years old, we could expect a maximum harvest of some 20 tons of olives. The oil content of our olives varies between 15% and 20% depending on stage of ripeness at harvest. We tend to harvest on the greener side to assure the pungent pepperiness of the oil we prefer. |
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| Our Vineyard | |||
| We currently grow six grape varietals (Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel, Grenache, Chardonnay and Viognier) on just under two acres. Most of the vines were planted in 2000 and 2001 and are now starting to reach maturity and exhibit true varietal characteristics. To assure quality, we limit fruit production to two tons or less per acre. We make and age our red wine in oak barrels for a year before turning it into vinegar through the traditional Orleans method and barrel-aging it another year before bottling it. |
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| The Harvest | |||
| The 2007 Allure Estates Harvest photos can be viewed in a slideshow at the top of this page. | |||
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