The Olive Gardener - Stephanie Pearson

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