The Olive Gardener - Stephanie Pearson

05.
>HOMME
AWAYFROM
HOME
By Stephanie Pearson
TheOlive
Gardener
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
SCION NION McEVOY
HAS TURNED HIS PLAYGROUND
RETREAT INTO SERIOUS BUSINESS
DRUMMER BOY
Nion McEvoy has always marched
to the beat of his own drum. Fortunately,
he’s an experienced percussionist.
Left, Marin County at its best.
BEYOND THE GATE TOPPED BY A FAT BRONZE RABBIT, up the winding dirt road
lined with olive trees, past the Joel Shapiro sculpture and the blue BMW 740 parked
in front of the California ranch house, through the door, and up the stairs, Nion McEvoy
is trying to take a shower.
“Nion!” yells ranch contractor Jeff Callinan, pounding on the bathroom door. “You
have a visitor!”
It appears the 56-year-old CEO of Chronicle Books and co-owner of McEvoy
Ranch, a 550-acre Marin County property that produces organic olives, doesn’t get
much privacy. McEvoy needs time to towel off before our interview, so I take a stroll
outside. I walk beside a pool that overlooks a pond, which is backed by rolling hills
covered in olive trees. If I weren’t walking toward a Chinese pagoda with a giant
copper lizard scaling its roof, I’d swear I was in Tuscany. On the opposite end of the
courtyard sits a lacy Victorian building that houses a cherry-red Yamaha piano signed
by Elton John.
The eclectic surroundings reflect the tastes of McEvoy, the great-grandson of San
Francisco Chronicle founder Michael de Young. The inspiration for the purchase
of the former dairy farm belongs to his mother, Nan Tucker McEvoy, who decided
to buy the property so that her grandchildren, Helen, Griffin, and Nion Jr., would
have a place to run wild. There was only one minor detail: Because the land was zoned
FROM LEFT: COURTESY OF MCEVOY RANCH; TODD HIDO
46 OUTSIDE’S GO SPRING 2009

05.
>HOMME
AWAYFROM
HOME
for agriculture, the McEvoy family would have to find a crop
to cultivate.
“Olives amused me,” Nan likes to say, so in the early nineties
she imported 3,000 trees from Italy.
She and Nion also imported Maurizio Castelli, an olive guru from
Tuscany who quickly helped turn the farm into the largest producer
of estate-grown organic olives in California. Their McEvoy Ranch
Traditional Blend and Olio Nuovo oils have been such successes
that the ranch recently launched an olive-oil-based skin-care line.
When I wander into the kitchen, Mark Rohrmeier, one of two
full-time chefs, interrupts his celery-root chopping to offer me a
piece of steaming baguette slathered in ...butter.
“Don’t tell the boss,” Rohrmeier says.
Not that the boss would care. The saving grace of Nion
McEvoy, who is also the chairman and CEO of Spin magazine,
a lawyer, and a drummer in what he calls “a competent garage
band,” is that he’s not a micromanager. In fact, McEvoy takes more
leadership cues from his life as a musician than from his legacy
as a descendant of the man who started his media empire in 1865
with the news of Abe Lincoln’s assassination.
“I’m a drummer,” McEvoy later tells me. “I set the beat and
create the space for other things to happen.”
What’s happening at the ranch right now is harvest time.
There’s a tangy scent of crushed olives in the air as John Deere
tractors zoom around the 80-acre grove harvesting seven varieties
of olives and putting them through the state-of-the-art Rapanelli
Sinolea extractor, which gently draws out the oil from the paste
without using heat or pressure. The end result is certifiedorganic
virgin olive oil so rich and flavorful that it regularly wins
awards, such as the 2005 Gold Medal at the L.A. County Fair.
In a week, the McEvoys will throw their annual Harvest Party,
with tyco drummers, zydeco bands, belly dancers, and a guest list
that includes their 50 employees and friends such as Mickey Hart
of the Grateful Dead and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
“It’s a great party,” says McEvoy, who has salt-and-pepper hair
and cornflower-blue eyes, and shows up on his vine-covered
veranda ten minutes after the shower episode dressed in blue corduroys,
a blue dress shirt, and blue Italian loafers. “We have two
bands: Hot Club of Cowtown and my band, Rough Draft. It’s sort
of a relaxed sixties cover band. We don’t rehearse much.”
McEvoy knows a good party. His peripatetic lifestyle and
eclectic résumé attest to the fact that he has experienced its many
forms. He worked as an attorney at the William Morris Agency
in Beverly Hills in the early eighties—“It’s hard to be candid
about that time period without being slanderous,” he says—
then spent a few years practicing Transcendental Meditation
at an Oregon commune and bartending at Zorba the Buddha,
in Portland.
CALIFORNIA IDYLL
Top left, a pagoda on the property
Yes, because they can. Right, a
Californio demonstrates olive wrestling.
FROM LEFT: TODD HIDO; COURTESY OF MCEVOY RANCH
48 OUTSIDE’S GO SPRING 2009

LOS OLIVOS
Clockwise from left, a porch on the
ranch where time seems to stand still;
pickers with their highly technical olivescooper-uppers;
and the cash crop.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: TODD HIDO; VICTORIA PEARSON (2)
“But my finest moment,” he
says, “was when I played ‘Mr.
Tambourine Man’ at the Fillmore
with Roger McGuinn of
the Byrds. That was complete
rock paradise.”
The titles found in Chronicle
Books’ catalog reflect the
boss’s varied interests. He
joined the publishing house
as an acquisitions editor of its
adult-books division in 1986
and 14 years later formed the
McEvoy Group to buy the
company. Since then, his bestselling
titles have included The
Beatles Anthology, The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook,
and Weber’s Art of the Grill.
“It’s not so much about the book itself. It’s an object of pleasure
that derives from its physicality,” McEvoy says. “I like to stay
close to things—like books, like olive oil—as opposed to the Wall
Street economy. I can understand Wall Street as a businessman and
a lawyer, but I have no interest in it.”
The ranch is also an object of pleasure for McEvoy. “I let my
mother do the work,” he jokes. “We have so many good people
who operate the ranch that I don’t have to get involved, except
in the financials and troubleshooting. I come out here to relax,
hike, and swim in the pool.”
McEvoy might not officially “work” at the ranch, but it’s evident
that both he and his mother work hard to cultivate a pleasurable,
salon-style atmosphere for both guests and employees.
Every day that she’s available, Nan drives up from San Francisco
with her chauffeur, Ali Khatabi, for lunch, a sit-down affair where
the staff mingles with whomever Nion or Nan happen to invite
along. Today it’s San Francisco–based photographer Todd Hido.
Nion, who also happens to be the chairman of photography
accessions at San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art, owns one of his photographs.
The kitchen is flooded with sunlight and filled with
art: A landscape painted by Wayne Thiebaud covers
one wall. Fourteen guests and employees sit down for
a three-course lunch the chefs have created mostly from
their organic garden out back. They serve us rock cod
in a tangy, red tomato-tarragon sauce and salad drizzled
with McEvoy olive oil, then top it off with ice
cream and chocolate-covered figs. The accompanying
wine is an organic pinot noir from nearby Stubbs Vineyard.
“We normally eat rice and beans,” says McEvoy. “But this is
a special occasion.”
The conversation flows from the organic pumpkins surrounding
the pagoda to Nan’s days in D.C. as one of the founding
staff members of the Peace Corps to photographer Garry
Winogrand’s series “Women Are Beautiful.”
“Mum,” says Nion, circling the conversation back to the
ranch, “tell her about your Pioneer Award from the California
Olive Oil Council.”
“Well,” says Nan, who is wearing a brown pantsuit and a
Barack Obama pin, “Maurizio picked 100 trees from Italy, put
them on an airplane, and I picked them up.” She tops off my glass.
“That’s how we brought a new vegetable to California. If your cow
is unhappy, you can now grow olives.”
Silence descends as we devour our dessert. We then sit in sated
homage to the chefs, until Nion starts drumming his fingers on
the tablecloth, a sign that this CEO’s idle stretch is over and it’s
time to move on. GO
SPRING 2009 OUTSIDE’S GO 49