Seka Hills nuts, wildflower honey and premium extra virgin Arbequina olive oil, produced by the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation.
The region’s tribe branches out to organic farming
Rows of dark green Arbequina olive trees stripe the straw-colored flats of the Capay Valley, below hills that glow periwinkle blue in the untamed August light. The trunks of the trees are planted as tightly as cereal boxes on a grocery store shelf, and by the early fall, the slender branches droop under the weight of tiny green olives.
These olives — or rather, their oil — are helping the Yocha Dehe Wintun nation, the American Indian tribe that owns the land, transform the way it interacts with the outside world. Starting in 2012, the tribe behind the Cache Creek Casino has also become the tribe that produces Seka Hills brand olive oil, wine and honey.
In the early 1900s, the U.S. government shoved the Yocha Dehe branch of the Wintun people onto a barren reservation on the north end of the Capay Valley. They fought their way back in 1940 to Brooks, a slightly more hospitable town to the south, but lived in debilitating poverty until they opened a bingo hall on tribal land in 1985.
Now a casino and resort, Cache Creek has brought the tribe’s 100 members housing, health care and education. Casino revenues have also given the tribe the resources to purchase close to 14,000 acres of land.
Establishing a diverse farming operation seemed like a good use for it. “Our families have been connected with this land and agriculture for many generations and we live in a fertile agricultural area,” writes tribal secretary James Kinter.
The tribe now farms 250 acres organically, leasing some to Riververdog Farms and selling the produce grown on the rest through Capay Organic. Plantings of walnut and almond trees (pronounced, in Capay Valley parlance, “ammands”) are spreading, as are the vineyards, which now cover 16 acres.
In winter, 450 head of cattle graze on Yocha Dehe land, and local apiarist John Foster also manages 3,000 beehives on the property. Immediately after pollinating the tribe’s almond trees, the hives are tucked into nooks in the Capay hills for the bees to gather nectar from local wildflowers.
“It’s been an awesome opportunity to work with the tribal council to build their agricultural enterprise,” says Jim Etters, director of land management, “and more recently, starting in 2010, working with them to build the brand Seka Hills, which we launched in the spring of 2012.”
If you’re surprised by the notion of buying premium olive oil from an American Indian tribe, you’re not familiar with the climate of the Capay Valley. The valley is hotter and drier than neighboring Napa, and water rights here are spotty; in fact, last year the Cache Creek, source of much of the surface water farmers use to irrigate their land, went dry. Yet, says Etters, “This is the ideal climate for olives.”
The tribal council planted 82 acres of Arbequina olives in 2007, which began producing oil in 2011. Another 22 acres of Frantoio, Piqual and Taggiasca olives will finally yield enough fruit to press this fall, and 20 more acres of Piqual are several years behind.
Once the tribal council discovered that they had to truck their fruit hundreds of miles away to press, they constructed a state-of-the-art mill across the highway from the casino. They opened the mill to local farmers, and 42 brought in their olives the first year alone.
Seka Hills oil can now be found at the casino gift shop as well as specialty markets and Whole Foods stores around Northern California. As of November 2014, visitors to the Capay Valley can see the olive mill, too, a portion of which has been transformed into the Seka Hills tasting room.
Cool and high-ceilinged, the tasting room has floors of reclaimed wood, shelves and rolling displays stocked with Northern California foodstuffs and cookbooks, and panoramic windows looking onto the milling operation.
At the bar you can taste your way through the wines, whose highlights include a Viognier with an herbaceous beginning and lots of stone fruit, the pretty 2014 Rosé of Syrah, and the 2012 Tuluk’a, a savory Bordeaux-Rhone blend. You can order a sandwich to accompany it, grab a bag of spiced nuts, or simply beg a spoonful of Seka Hills wildflower honey, which tastes as if the valley was dusted with Christmas spices.
The tasting culminates in tiny cups of Seka Hills oil. Warming the cups in your hands to release the aromatic compounds, taking minuscule sips — just a few drops to coat the tongue — the distinctions between, say, the mellow, balanced Arbequina oil and the oil from the fruitier, more peppery Frantoio become clear.
The best time to visit the tasting room may, in fact, be the fall. The milling operations spring into life at the beginning of October and operate at peak pace through mid-November.
For a few months this season, too, Seka Hills releases a perishable, vividly pungent olio nuovo, or “new oil” — an ephemeral product from a farm whose future plans stretch into the centuries to come.