Dramatic climate events and crop shortages have Graber, a century-old family company, facing permanent closure.
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Used to be Graber olives were a culinary institution — for those in the know. They were prized by celebrities like Lucille Ball and Jimmy Fallon and served annually at the Masters golf tournament dinner. New York City’s venerable Russ & Daughters market sold them for decades and decorated its first restaurant with Graber cans.
Canned olives aren’t usually such an exciting prospect. They tend to be briny with little hint of the, well, oliveness under the salt. But Grabers are a different experience altogether: big, meaty and green with a rosy hue, and something like eating a pod of pure olive oil.
“It’s just that nice buttery flavor,” said Renee Landingham, who manages the Olive Pit store in Corning, Calif., which sold Grabers for decades. “We still have customers come by and ask, ‘Where’s Graber? Where’s Graber?’”
That question may have an unhappy answer.
Today, the 130-year-old cannery in Ontario, Calif., sits silent and empty, its future in doubt. For two years in a row no high school students have helped out during the fall and winter season, and seasonal workers have not returned to fill cans with the buttery, tree-ripened olives on equipment that is more than a century old. The paper detailing the company’s curing recipe is hidden away in a safe deposit box.
The nation’s oldest olive business might be gone forever, done in by a combination of extreme weather and shaky finances. An emergency $1.55 million loan comes due in March, and the Graber family worries it might be the end.
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