This August, while visiting my family, in Ojai, California, I decided to interview my brother, Philip Asquith, Master Miller of Ojai Olive Oil.

This small-batch, very-high-quality (if I say so myself) olive oil company is the legacy of my father, Ron Asquith, who bought a funny-shaped piece of land at the East End of the Ojai Valley in 1997. 

In a valley tucked into the foothills of the Sespe Wilderness Area, my father discovered a grove of Spanish olive trees – Lechin de Sevilla, as he later found out – planted in the nineteenth century, at a time when there were still few Europeans in California. 

He decided to learn how to make olive oil and traveled to Tuscany to study from the masters; he returned home with a small press. The rest is history.

This was a low-tech, spur-of-the-moment interview. Phil and I used our phones and walked around the grove, examined the mill and, of course, tasted some olive oil. 

The result was better than I could have hoped for.  I learned quite a bit (and I think of myself as someone who knows more than the average Jane about olive oil). We talked about why olive oil is considered one of the superfoods, how to buy a really good bottle of olive oil (and why you want to know) and what it means, to Phil, to be an olive farmer and a steward of the land.