There is a row of olive trees on Lassen Street in Chatsworth, in the northwest corner of Los Angeles, that were planted in 1893. That makes them older than most of the United States' major institutions and actually also older than Hollywood itself. And yet the olive tree these were grown from has been cultivated by human hands for somewhere between six and eight thousand years.

We love working with olive wood! We carry it in our store, we split it, we deliver it to restaurants and homes across Southern California, and we ship it in boxes to grill enthusiasts across the country. Recently, we have also started shipping olive firewood on pallets to restaurants all over the US (the shipping costs are surprisingly affordable - under certain conditions, ask Tim for details). 
Every time we handle a piece of olive wood: dense, pale gold, with a grain that looks almost like it was carved, we're aware that we're working with something that connects the ancient world to this one.

A Tree That Changed Civilization

The olive tree is one of the oldest cultivated plants on earth. Archaeological evidence points to systematic cultivation beginning around 6,000 to 8,000 years ago, most likely in the eastern Mediterranean, in the region that is now modern-day Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. From there it spread westward across the ancient world: to Greece, to Rome, to North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. 

What made the olive so central to ancient civilization wasn't any single use — it was all of them at once. The fruit was food. The oil was cooking fat, lamp fuel, medicine, and cosmetic. The wood was construction material, tool handles, and fuel. The tree itself asked for almost nothing in return: poor soil, full sun, very little water, and coastal air. It thrived precisely where other crops could not.

It's worth pausing on the word "oil" for a moment. In several ancient and modern languages, the words for oil and olive share the same root. In Greek, elaion (oil) comes directly from elaia (olive). In Latin, oleum and oliva. The connection is not coincidence — for most of recorded history, "oil" simply meant olive oil. It was the default. Everything else had to be specified.

The olive tree also carried symbolic weight far beyond its practical uses:

• To the ancient Romans, the olive branch was the symbol of peace — a gesture of goodwill offered to enemies and allies alike.
• To the ancient Greeks, it was used in supplication — a person seeking mercy from a ruler would carry an olive branch. Winners of the early Olympic games received crowns woven from wild olive.
• In the Bible, it was an olive leaf that the dove brought back to Noah — proof that the floodwaters had receded and the world was habitable again.
• The United Nations uses two olive branches framing the globe in its emblem — a direct inheritance of the Roman peace symbol.
• The United States eagle holds an olive branch in its right talon — chosen by the founders to represent the young nation's preference for peace over war.

There are an estimated one billion olive trees growing in the world today, concentrated in Mediterranean climates: southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East — and California.

How the Olive Came to California

Spanish Franciscan missionaries brought the olive to California in the late 18th century, planting trees at and around the famous Missions as they established settlements from San Diego northward. The trees were practical — oil for cooking and lamps, fruit for eating — but they were also deeply familiar, a piece of the Old World transplanted to a new one.

Those trees planted in 1893 on Lassen Street in Chatsworth — the ones we mentioned at the start — are direct descendants of that Mission-era stock. They are roughly half the age of the United States. Standing next to them, you're standing next to something that has been alive through every chapter of California's history: the Gold Rush, the founding of Los Angeles, two World Wars, the rise and transformation of Hollywood.

Today, California produces approximately 95 percent of all commercially grown olives in the United States, across some 35,000 acres — mostly in the Central Valley, where the climate is ideal: hot summers, mild winters, and the well-drained soils that olive trees prefer. Another thousand-odd acres exist in other parts of the country, but California is, for practical purposes, America's olive country.

This is why we can source olive wood that most suppliers across the country cannot. We are based in Southern California, with direct access to Central Valley orchards. When olive trees are pruned, removed, or replaced — as all agricultural trees eventually are — we work with growers to take that wood and put it to use.

What Makes Olive Wood Remarkable

Olive wood is dense. More dense, in fact, than most of the hardwoods people typically reach for — oak, hickory, cherry. It burns hot and long, producing a sustained, even heat with relatively little smoke. The smoke it does produce is mild and aromatic, with a faintly sweet character that works particularly well with fish, lamb, chicken, and vegetables.

It is also, visually, one of the most striking woods we carry. The grain is irregular and flowing — no two pieces look the same. The color ranges from pale cream to warm gold to deeper brown, often streaked with darker figuring. When you split a piece of olive, it looks almost too beautiful to burn.

And then you burn it, and it's even better.

Olive Wood in the Kitchen: A Mediterranean Tradition

In Mediterranean countries — Greece, Italy, Spain, Lebanon, Morocco — cooking over olive wood is not a specialty technique. It is simply how food is cooked. Wood-fired ovens, open grills, and hearths burning olive are the foundation of a culinary tradition that stretches back millennia. The wood's heat output makes it ideal for the high-temperature cooking that gives grilled meats and flatbreads their characteristic char. Its gentle smoke adds depth without overwhelming.

Here in Los Angeles, a growing number of chefs and restaurant operators have rediscovered this tradition. We supply olive wood to a range of Southern California restaurants — wood-fired pizza operations, Argentine parrillas, Mediterranean kitchens, and upscale venues where the quality of every ingredient, including the fuel, matters. Several of these have been our customers for years.

What these chefs consistently tell us: olive wood performs differently from oak or almond. The heat is more intense and more sustained. The smoke is subtler — present but not dominant. For dishes where the wood is meant to be felt rather than tasted, it's ideal. For fish, in particular, it's exceptional.

Best pairings for olive wood smoke: whole fish, lamb chops and leg of lamb, chicken and game birds, root vegetables, flatbreads and pizza, shellfish.

How We Carry It: Logs, Splits, Chunks, and Pallets

We carry olive wood in several forms, depending on how you plan to use it:

• Logs (full-length, 19") — for fireplaces and wood-burning inserts. A cord of olive burns longer and hotter than most hardwoods of comparable size. Available for home delivery across LA and Ventura Counties, and for pickup at our locations in Moorpark, Simi Valley, Camarillo, Granada Hills, Koreatown, and Long Beach.
• Splits (12") — shorter pieces ideal for outdoor fire pits, chimineas, and smaller fireplaces. Also works beautifully in wood-fired pizza ovens where a faster, more controllable fire is needed.
• BBQ Chunks — for smoking and grilling. We pack our olive chunks in half-cubic-foot and full-cubic-foot boxes, shipped to your door. Free shipping west of the Rockies; flat-rate shipping to the rest of the continental US. If you've never smoked with olive, a small box is the place to start.
• Palletized restaurant supply — for professional kitchens anywhere in the United States. We ship palletized olive wood direct from the Central Valley to restaurants across the country. If your kitchen runs on wood and you want California olive, we can get it to you. Contact us to discuss quantities and delivery.

All of our olive wood is properly seasoned — bone dry, as we say in the trade. That means moisture content well below 20%, which translates to a cleaner burn, easier ignition, and better flavor if you're using it for cooking. We don't ship or deliver green wood.

A Tree That Outlives Almost Everything

One last thing about the olive tree, because it deserves to be said: these trees live for an extraordinary amount of time. In California, where agriculture moves faster and land values are higher, a productive olive tree might stand for a century or more. In parts of the Mediterranean — Crete, Sardinia, the Levant — there are trees still producing fruit that are believed to be 2,000 to 4,000 years old. The oldest documented specimens have been alive since before the Roman Empire reached its peak.

The Chatsworth trees we mentioned — planted 130 years ago from Mission-era rootstock — are young by that standard. They have centuries ahead of them, if the land permits.

When we carry olive wood, it is almost always from trees that have reached the end of their productive orchard life, or from prunings taken as part of responsible grove management. The tree gave fruit for decades. The wood gives heat, flavor, and light for years more. Nothing is wasted.

That's what we like about it.