The Good Life

Good Life Guy LOVES Olives!  And this show will no doubt make you love them too.  My guest is Greg Leonard founding partner of Alive & Well Olives.

From Greece, Probiotic Rich Olives With Live, Active Cultures.

Alive & Well olives come from small, family farms and village co-ops in Greece, who follow the same traditional agricultural methods used in the region for thousands of years. Some of the trees are over 1,000 years old. These raw, heirloom olives are grown, harvested and cured to capture their delicious flavors while delivering naturally occurring probiotics and essential nutrients.  Perfect as a snack, in salads, appetizers or entrées, Alive & Well olives are rich in live, active cultures.  Learn more here!

Cultivation & Harvest
Tightly knit groups of collaborating growers produce the crop for Alive & Well olives in contiguous olive groves in Greece. The families involved cultivate and tend the groves, harvest the crop and transfer the fruit to communally owned vats in the respective olive grove regions. The olives are picked by hand, often in multiple stages, then the just-ripened fruit is quickly transferred to near-by curing vats, minimizing deterioration by exposure to air.

Curing
Fermentation occurs spontaneously as the ambient cultures carried on the skin of the olives become active in the brine within hours of picking. The fermentation brine is made with unrefined sea-salt from regional salt flats. These natural cultures include several varieties of lactobacillus, yeasts and enzymes, specific to the location. Olive lovers believe that this rich diversity of cultures is responsible for the special character of olives from a particular location. The immediate access to the curing vats makes it possible to gather olives in successive passes for optimum ripeness. Members of the group oversee the curing of the fermenting olives, which is allowed to proceed to completion. The facility supervisors and lab techs are also members of the grower group who have had special training. The olives remain undisturbed in the fermenting, “mother” brine until they are packed for shipment to market.

Packaging
The facility shared by the co-op farm families has jar-filling and labeling equipment run by members of the group. This allows these collaborating growers to ensure the quality of the olives from tree to jar.  By the time Alive & Well olives are jarred, the food is a flavorful fruit with an appealing texture that retains the full complement of nutrients including active probiotic cultures.  Follow Alive and Well Olives on Facebook.

Greg Leonard has over forty years of leadership experience in the Natural Products Industry serving much of that time as a senior executive for Tree of Life, one of the largest wholesale distributors in the business. While at Tree of Life, Greg led highly successful sales, marketing, procurement and product development teams. He contributed to the growth of Tree of Life from $2 Million in annual sales when he joined the company in 1974, to over $2 Billion in sales by 2002.

Since leaving the distribution business, Greg has continued to have an active role in the Natural Products Industry working closely with key independent retailers on strategic planning and as an advisor on matters associated with business development.

I’ll also be taking to Elliott Benitez about NUNI toaster, a six slot counter top toaster for tortillas!  Perfect for “Cinco de Mayo”
As the inventor of the Nuni Toaster, Elliot Benitez identifies as of one of the product’s core consumer segments. Elliot’s upbringing allowed him to identify a need in the marketplace for not only his family, but lovers of tacos everywhere. His unique insight holds high value as the Nuni Toaster business enters a new product category within the multi-billion dollar electric housewares industry.

Nuni Toaster automates the labor-intensive process of warming tortillas at home into a new electric tortilla toaster. The patent-pending design can prepare 6 hot tortillas in under 60 seconds. In addition, the vertical tortilla toaster design eliminates the need to flip a tortilla ever again.

Good Life Guy’s Wine of the Week:
2015 BULA Mazuelo/Grenache/Syrah blend, D.O. Montsant
40% Cariñena, 40% Grenache and 20% Syrah aged 4 months in French & American oak.  Brilliant ruby color with fresh and assertive perfume nose, displaying an array of red and dark berry scents and a soft floral character. Sweet and seamless on the palate, with juicy black raspberry and violet pastille flavors and an undercurrent of smoky minerality. The persistent finish shows very good focus and lift, framed by silky, slow-building tannin.

Grab a bottle at Jacob Liquor Exchange on N. Rock Road

“Brilliant ruby. Bright red fruits on the nose, with peppery spices and a floral pastille
element adding nuance. Deep and appealingly sweet but energetic too, with
good energy and lift to its raspberry and bitter cherry flavors. Silky tannins build
slowly on the long, pliant finish, with the floral note echoing.” IWC90 – Stephen Tanzer