Inside Séka Hills’ Quality-First Approach in California’s Capay Valley

Summary

Séka Hills, an olive oil pro­ducer in California’s Capay Valley, has won one Gold Award and four Silver Awards at the 2026 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, attribut­ing their suc­cess to a focus on soil health, tree bal­ance, and bio­di­ver­sity. The farm has expanded steadily over the years, with a focus on qual­ity rather than vol­ume, and is pre­pared to eval­u­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for fur­ther growth in the olive oil sec­tor as the wine grape indus­try con­tracts in California.

An olive oil pro­ducer in California’s Capay Valley has won one Gold Award and four Silver Awards at the 2026 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, adding to the 13 awards the estate has col­lected in New York in recent years.

“With our tast­ings, we knew we were deliv­er­ing high-qual­ity prod­ucts. What we did not real­ize was that we would win all of those awards in New York,” Jim Etters, direc­tor of land man­age­ment at Séka Hills, told Olive Oil Times.

“We knew going into the milling sea­son that we had great weather con­di­tions,” Etters said. ​“When we got the news, we were so excited. We’ve got a small team, but a very hard­work­ing team. Everybody — from the farm­ing side, to the pro­cess­ing side, to the sales side — was happy to see that recog­ni­tion.”

Etters attrib­uted much of the suc­cess to a long-term focus on soil health, tree bal­ance and bio­di­ver­sity — an approach that mir­rors the land stew­ard­ship phi­los­o­phy of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, the fed­er­ally rec­og­nized Native American tribe that owns and oper­ates the estate.

He said cooler con­di­tions that held through har­vest helped main­tain qual­ity and reduced pres­sure on work­ers, mak­ing it eas­ier to col­lect and mill fruit at peak con­di­tion.

In Capay Valley, mid-October har­vest can still bring tem­per­a­tures in the mid-90s Fahrenheit, about 35 ºC. In those con­di­tions, qual­ity-focused grow­ers often turn to night har­vest­ing and take extra steps to keep olives cool before milling.

While the farm is rel­a­tively young, Etters said it has moved well beyond the exper­i­men­tal stage. ​“When we started on this adven­ture 15 years ago, we knew the soils and the cli­mate here in the Capay Valley and Western Yolo County were ideal for grow­ing olives. Still, not many peo­ple were doing it here at that time,” he said.

That early period required years of vari­ety tri­als and the refine­ment of key prac­tices such as prun­ing, which can strongly influ­ence yields, tree health, and resilience to weather extremes.

In north­ern California, where alter­nate bear­ing and yield insta­bil­ity can chal­lenge pro­duc­ers, canopy man­age­ment has become a focal point of olive farm­ing research. Séka Hills has adjusted canopy archi­tec­ture to improve light pen­e­tra­tion and reg­u­late veg­e­ta­tive growth, aim­ing to sta­bi­lize pro­duc­tion across sea­sons rather than chase peak yields.

“I think that’s what the indus­try is really focused on now,” Etters said. ​“How can we prune these trees to try and main­tain a con­sis­tent yield?”

Experience in the field has also shaped other agro­nomic deci­sions. ​“What we’re find­ing is less is more,” he said. ​“When it comes to inputs, that’s prob­a­bly one of the biggest find­ings we’ve had. Our trees don’t need as much nitro­gen. They may not need as much water.”

The tribe began with an 80-acre plant­ing and expanded steadily, block by block. Today, the acreage and expected yields are aligned with the estate mill’s capac­ity. ​“Our focus has always been on qual­ity, not vol­ume,” Etters said. ​“We never wanted to be the Coca-Cola of olive oil. It was all about qual­ity and all about estate-grown.”

The orchards now stretch across roughly 15 miles of var­ied ter­rain and micro­cli­mates. ​“It’s amaz­ing to see the dif­fer­ences in how the dif­fer­ent blocks mature at dif­fer­ent times, even of the same vari­ety — dif­fer­ent micro­cli­mates, dif­fer­ent soil types,” Etters said.

He added that the geo­graphic diver­sity has become a strate­gic advan­tage, allow­ing the team to com­press har­vest into about 45 days while mov­ing from block to block as fruit reaches opti­mal matu­rity.

Choosing the har­vest win­dow depends on vari­ety, block loca­tion and fruit phys­i­ol­ogy. Etters said the team diver­si­fied into medium-den­sity plant­i­ngs to offer a broader range of fla­vor pro­files. ​“Aside from the Arbequina, which is, of course, excel­lent, there’s a lot more out there,” he said.

That diver­sity was reflected in the 2026 results, with the estate’s Gold Award going to a Coratina mono­va­ri­etal.

“We like to har­vest some of it early on the green side, but for the most part pretty much in the mid­dle,” Etters said. ​“We con­stantly mon­i­tor those lev­els as we get toward har­vest through lab­o­ra­tory analy­sis for oil con­tent and mois­ture con­tent.”

Harvest tim­ing also fol­lows a hard regional dead­line. ​“We have to get our fruit off the trees by about the first of December,” Etters said. ​“That’s about the time when we see our first freeze events here. If we still have fruit on the trees and we get down to 26 or 27 degrees Fahrenheit (about ‑3 ºC), the fruit will freeze. Then you can’t pro­duce high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil from that fruit.”

Etters said cli­mate volatil­ity in California has inten­si­fied over the past decade, espe­cially in annual pre­cip­i­ta­tion. ​“It seems like it’s either really, really wet or really, really dry,” he said. ​“There is no more nor­mal.”

Still, he argued that olives offer resilience that many tra­di­tional California crops do not. ​“As a grower of almonds and wal­nuts and toma­toes, those can’t sur­vive with­out water. Olives can,” Etters said. ​“They may not pro­duce much yield in a drought, but the trees aren’t going to die.”

In a region where ground­wa­ter reg­u­la­tion is tight­en­ing and sur­face water access is under increas­ing scrutiny, he said olives pro­vide com­par­a­tive sta­bil­ity.

Over the past decade, Séka Hills has invested in irri­ga­tion infra­struc­ture to max­i­mize sur­face water use. ​“We’ve put more irri­ga­tion infra­struc­ture in place to uti­lize more sur­face water as opposed to ground­wa­ter,” Etters said. ​“Having Cache Creek in our back­yard is a great source of sur­face water. We’re work­ing to max­i­mize that across the tribe’s lands.”

He added that results depend on pre­ci­sion rather than max­i­mum irri­ga­tion, with care­ful sched­ul­ing tied to orchard needs and sea­sonal con­di­tions.

Etters said part of mit­i­gat­ing uncer­tainty is to strengthen bio­di­ver­sity and main­tain the land. Measures include water con­ser­va­tion, min­i­mal pes­ti­cide use, native-plant hedgerows, pro­tec­tion of ripar­ian cor­ri­dors, and removal of inva­sive weeds — steps that align with the estate’s broader sus­tain­abil­ity goals.

“The tribe has been here in this val­ley for over 5,000 years,” Etters said. ​“They take sus­tain­abil­ity and their cul­ture into con­sid­er­a­tion in every deci­sion they make on the farm and ranch. They want to pro­tect and pre­serve the land not just for their com­mu­nity, but for their neigh­bors as well.”

While the oper­a­tion is not actively look­ing to expand olive acreage, Etters said the farm may eval­u­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties cre­ated by the con­trac­tion of California’s wine sec­tor. ​“With the cur­rent state of the wine grape indus­try, the amount of vine­yards being removed here, I think there’s going to be a large amount of acreage planted into olives over the next five to ten years,” he pre­dicted.

He added that com­pe­ti­tion in California’s olive oil sec­tor is increas­ing, even as grow­ers remain col­lab­o­ra­tive. ​“We’re still a pretty small com­mu­nity of grow­ers and proces­sors,” Etters said. ​“We still help each other out.”

For Etters, the estate’s iden­tity remains insep­a­ra­ble from the land and the tribe’s long his­tory in the val­ley. ​“Having the chance to walk through the groves with the tribal cit­i­zens and take a break under a 300-year-old oak tree, you feel that very spe­cial con­nec­tion,” he said.