This Certified-Organic Texas Farm Presses the State’s Most-Awarded Extra Virgin Oil

For years, olive oil was just the stuff I splashed into a hot pan without a second thought. Then I learned that the fresh, green, peppery kind is a completely different thing, and I have chased that taste ever since.

You can find it at Texas Hill Country Olive Co. in Dripping Springs, where the oil is grassy and green and the whole place feels like a slice of Tuscany dropped onto a limestone slope thirty miles west of Austin.

Below, I will walk you through the grove, the tasting room, the farm bistro, and the family story behind the most awarded olive oil company in the state. Bring an appetite and a slow afternoon, and maybe an empty spot in your pantry.

Rows of Olive Trees on a Texas Hillside

You come up a winding road, and then the orchard opens in front of you. Silvery-green olive trees run in neat rows down a sloped hillside, and a breeze moves through them almost constantly.

That breeze is not an accident. It helps pollinate the trees, and the rocky limestone soil underneath gives the roots the sharp drainage that olives love. The alkaline ground here works the way it does around the Mediterranean.

The land sits on about 17 acres, and roughly 2,000 olive trees grow across it. Rows of Pendolino trees are scattered through the orchard as pollinators, quietly helping the whole grove set fruit each season.

Most of the grove is Arbequina, a Spanish variety known for a soft, buttery oil, planted alongside hardy types like Arbosana and Koroneiki. Each one carries its own flavor, and blending them is part of how the farm builds its signature bottles.

Standing at the top of the slope, with the hills rolling out past the last row, you would be forgiven for forgetting you are in Central Texas at all. It looks, and smells, like somewhere much older.

A Tuscan-style stone building anchors the property. At 11,000 square feet, it holds the mill, the tasting room, the bistro, and the shop all under one roof, so the whole visit happens in one unhurried place.

Come in the fall and you may catch the harvest, when the fruit comes off the trees and goes straight into the mill on site. Pressing the olives within hours of picking is exactly why the oil tastes so alive.

The Tasting That Changes How You Think About Olive Oil

The heart of a visit is the guided tasting, and it is worth booking ahead because seats fill up. It runs about 45 minutes to an hour, costs $25 per person, and caps at 24 people, so it never feels like a crowd.

Your guide pours a lineup of the farm’s extra virgin olive oils and aged balsamic vinegars, and teaches you how to actually taste them. You sip, you slurp a little air across it, and you notice the grassy front, the buttery middle, the peppery finish.

You also learn to tell an early harvest oil from a late one. Early harvest olives, picked green, give a bolder, more pungent oil, while later fruit turns milder and rounder. Once you have tasted them side by side, you cannot unlearn the difference.

There is a short video too, showing how the olives travel from tree to mill to bottle. By the end you understand why truly fresh olive oil tastes nothing like the tired bottle sitting in your pantry at home.

They dip fresh bread as you go, so you taste each oil the way you would actually use it. The balsamics come out last, dark and syrupy, and pairing an oil with a vinegar becomes its own small game.

One visitor on Tripadvisor called it the “best olive tour and tasting” they had ever done. An oil tasting that ends with blood orange oil poured over cold gelato earns that kind of praise easily.

Did you know? Real extra virgin olive oil has a shelf life, the way bread does. It is a fresh juice, not a preserve, and it tastes best within a year or two of pressing. That is the whole case for buying it close to where it was made.

Lunch at the Farm Bistro

You do not have to book anything to eat here. The Hill Country Bistro is open daily from 10:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., you order at the counter, and they bring the food out to your table.

It is farm-to-table in the most literal sense, since the olive oil in your dish was pressed a few steps away. A great place to start is the Italian Burrata at $14 and the Signature Olives and Dipping Oil at $10, both made for mopping up with bread.

If you are hungry, the Grazing Board at $23 and the Loaded Hummus Board at $18 are built for sharing, piled with cheese, cured meats, and vegetables you can drag through the good oil. The herbed tomato soup at $5 is a steal on a cool day.

The flatbreads are the thing to get. The Margherita runs $13, the Pear and Prosciutto and the Italian Sausage are $16 each, and the Harvest Vegetable is $15, all of them finished with a drizzle of the farm’s own oil.

There are bright salads too, a Lemon Caesar Wedge and a Harvest Pear Salad in the $14 to $15 range, and sandwiches like the Basil Pesto BLT and the Hill Country Italian around $16 to $17. Save room for the tiramisu at $8.

If I were ordering, I would get the Pear and Prosciutto flatbread with a glass of their red, out on the patio where the breeze comes off the grove. It is a very hard lunch to hurry through.

Pro tip: the family also makes wine under the Tenuta di Gambini label from Texas High Plains grapes. A glass runs $10 to $15, and it pairs beautifully with a flatbread out on the patio.

A Thanksgiving Idea That Grew Into an Orchard

The whole thing started at a Thanksgiving table in 2008. John Gambini had read about a handful of Texas farmers experimenting with olive trees, and he floated the idea to his daughter, Cara.

The Gambinis are third and fourth generation Italian immigrants, and olive oil was already in their blood. Rather than plant a vineyard like nearly everyone else in the Hill Country, they decided to honor their heritage and grow olives instead.

They bought 17 acres in Dripping Springs and, in 2009, trucked in around 2,000 olive trees from California. By planting mature trees instead of tiny cuttings, they had fruit on the branches the very next year.

The choice to skip grapes was deliberate. The Hill Country was already filling up with wineries, and the Gambinis wanted to build something the region did not have yet rather than compete in a crowded field.

The gamble paid off fast. In 2010 they became the first to win competition medals for Texas-grown olive oil, and the awards have kept coming ever since from judges in New York, Los Angeles, and Berlin.

Today the farm is the only certified organic olive orchard in Texas. It also ranks among the top 20 most awarded olive oil companies in the entire world, which is a wild sentence to write about a hillside outside Austin.

Cara, who helped start the farm as a young woman, now runs the whole operation and personally stands behind every bottle. “It has been a labor of love ever since,” she has said, and you can taste that care in the oil.

Bottles Worth Bringing Home

The shop, open daily from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., is where you stock up on what you tasted. It is a happy problem, because there are more olive oils and balsamics here than most people have ever seen in one room.

Their signature bottle is Sola Stella, a 100% Arbequina extra virgin olive oil that is buttery and light with a gentle peppery kick. It is the one to reach for if you want a single everyday oil that does everything well.

From there it gets playful. There are infused oils in garlic, basil, lemon, chili, and that revelatory blood orange, each one pressed with the fruit or herb so the flavor is real rather than added later.

The balsamic vinegars are just as fun, aged and thickened and infused with fruits and herbs until a plain green salad turns into something you actually look forward to. A splash of the fig or the peach on cheese is dangerous.

The thing I love most about a good early harvest oil is how it wants to be tasted plain, on nothing more than bread with a little salt. That is when you notice the pepper catch at the back of your throat, the sign of a fresh, healthy oil.

The shop also carries the gourmet extras that make good gifts: soaps and lotions made with olive oil, dipping spices, pastas, and sauces. It is easy to walk in for one bottle and leave with a basket for everyone on your list.

Tip: grab a small bottle of the blood orange oil specifically for dessert. Drizzled over vanilla ice cream or gelato at home, it is the trick that will make your dinner guests demand to know your secret.

Planning Your Visit

Tastings run Tuesday through Thursday at 2:00 p.m., and Friday through Sunday at 11:00 a.m., 12:30 p.m., and 2:00 p.m. Book online ahead of time, because a limited number of seats go fast on weekends.

If you only want to shop and eat, the gourmet store and the bistro are open seven days a week, no reservation needed. It makes an easy stop on a Hill Country loop through Dripping Springs and its wineries and distilleries.

Bring a hat and a little sunscreen if you plan to wander the rows, since the orchard is open and the Texas sun finds you. Morning tastings on the weekend are the coolest and the calmest time to go.

Give yourself a couple of unhurried hours. Between the grove, the tasting, and a long lunch, this is a place that rewards slowing down rather than rushing through, and the staff seem to want it that way.

How to Get There

Where: Texas Hill Country Olive Co., 2530 W Fitzhugh Rd, Dripping Springs, TX 78620

It sits about 30 miles west of downtown Austin, an easy day trip from the city or a natural pairing with the Fitzhugh Road wineries and breweries nearby. You can reach it in well under an hour from central Austin.

Plan Your Hill Country Olive Oil Day

Book a tasting, order a flatbread, and let someone pour fresh Texas olive oil over your gelato before you decide whether it sounds strange. Chances are you will drive home with a bottle of blood orange oil and a new appreciation for how good the real thing can taste.

Featured image: @ Texas Hill Country Olive Co