Julie Coldani and Gina Sans play major roles on Calivirgin team

Just off of Interstate 5, a tall building emblazoned with “Calivirgin” sits amid a grove of olive trees. The building holds a tasting room and offices for Coldani Olive Ranch, the makers of the popular California olive oil brand.

Julie Coldani and Gina Sans (a Coldani by birth) are, along with their husbands Mike Coldani and Scott Sans, the vital forces that run the family-owned ranch.

Both women handle much of the work of selling their product. Sans handles much of the design work, including the website, as well as much of the company’s finances. Coldani does more of the marketing side, which involves reaching out to sellers from Lodi businesses to major chains to share Calivirgin’s products.

Of course, they also pitch in with most of the other jobs the olive ranch needs done, right down to bottling the oil and cleaning the equipment.

“We wear a lot of hats,” Coldani said.

“Nothing is off the table,” Sans joked.

Calivirgin is in the middle area where the company is large enough to attract attention — like 86 awards from industry organizations last year alone — but small enough that most of the work is done by the family and a small, trusted team.

The Coldanis have farmed in the Lodi area for 90 years, but until recently, they mostly focused on row crops, cattle and other enterprises.

It wasn’t until 2005 that the family decided to jump on the olive oil revolution, one of three farms in the Lodi area to strike on the idea.

The first harvest was in 2008, Sans said.

At first, the family had planned to sell the bulk of that first harvest, hanging onto a few olives for their own use. But that plan fell through, and they decided to try making their own olive oil instead — Mike Coldani’s college senior project, Sans said.

It was a learning experience, but soon they were pressing olives together with fruits, peppers, herbs or other ingredients — a key difference from other oils, Coldani said. Most companies press the olives to make oil, then add flavoring after the fact, instead of pressing fresh ingredients together, she said.

“We’ve found our niche in the flavored olive oil market,” she said.

The company has grown over the last decade, and in 2014, they acquired the Lodi Olive Oil Company.

Their unique technique for pressing flavored oils has the benefit of keeping their flavor fresh, natural and modern — a feeling Sans tries to capture in the company’s labeling and marketing materials.

She sketched out the idea for the Lodi Olive Oil Company’s new label, which incorporates the Calivirgin logo. Now the Coldanis are bottling olive oil under both brands. They also sell imported vinegar and spoons made of olive wood.

The tasting room off of I-5, open five days a week, is the next step in their business plan. It opened during the holiday season, and the pair hope it will draw travelers on the freeway to stop for a taste — and then the tasting room staff can point them in Lodi’s direction.

“The whole premise of this location is we wanted to get on the wine map,” Sans added.

The family wants to educate people about olive oil the same way Lodi wineries have taught the public about wine, Coldani said.

Like grapes, there are many types of olives out there.

“We have four varieties of olives here, and they all taste different,” she said.

Wineries have broken ground for that kind of education, she said. Now, they can compare different olive types like Arbequina and Koroneiki to wine varietals like Chardonnay and Tempranillo.

Coldani and Sans hope to educate the rest of the state about Lodi the same way that they hope to share olive oil with Lodi.

Julie Coldani was recently elected to the California Olive Oil Council, to serve a threeyear term on the board of directors.

Up until recently, there were no state standards to guarantee that olive oils were what they claimed to be on the label. To fill that gap, the COOC was born. Olive oil companies can send chemical test results of their oil along with samples for blind taste tests in order to become certified as extra virgin by the COOC.

“What they do for the industry is so helpful for all of us,” Coldani said.

The COOC is involved with the Olive Center at the University of California, Davis, a coalition between the university and the olive oil industry that studies the quality of olive oils in the U.S. and the health benefits of olive oil.

When the pair aren’t working at the Coldani Olive Ranch, they’re caring for their children — Julie and Mike Coldani have three kids who are 8, 5 and 2, and Gina and Scott Sans have a 4-year-old and a 1-year-old.

The two women are involved at their children’s schools, and in sports.

“Sometimes we try to squeeze a vacation into a work event,” Sans said.

“Like, ‘After this olive oil festival, let’s stay two days and go to the beach,’” Coldani added.

Coldani is also a runner, who has a few half-marathons and marathons under her belt.

But they manage to balance the two, and they’re working with their husbands to constantly improve Calivirgin. They already have plans for a new, much larger tasting room in a separate building among their olive groves. The current building will continue to house their offices.

The sales grow every year, and the awards are a great affirmation that they’re doing well, Coldani said.

“It’s just surprising to us every day that we’ve grown this hobby into what it is today,” she said.