Wonder Valley: A Conversation with Co-Founder Alison Carroll

What is it like to be bi-coastal and run your own business?

It's hard. I ask myself, what's the playbook that is appropriate for running a business and just made it a joyful ride? We're really proud to be so self funded and family owned. And so that's given us a tremendous amount of flexibility and creativity. I think we've been designing Wonder Valley to work for us rather than we work for it.

I really admire how you let your own ethics drive where you’re going with Wonder Valley. How do you balance the creative process with the business side of the work?

The elusive work life balance. I think I'm letting go of that idea because it's just too self punishing and always feels like a moving goalpost. Instead, I’m asking, where can I find peace and pleasure today? How can I microdose joy every day? And that could be taking pauses for a walk, cooking meals with my family, or leaving the little work vortex of a home office and getting out in the world. It's very easy between the two places we live to access nature so that's really nourishing. But yeah, I guess I stopped thinking about it and it's a new thing for me to let that go. I think motherhood played a part in it, we have a two year old and so that just felt like another leg on the table to try to balance motherhood, work, life, the murkiness of running a business with your spouse, the lack of boundaries between home and life. So I think I'm looking at it more granularly every day, rather than the big picture, which sometimes feels hard to attain.

I love that phrase, micro dosing joy. And I wonder if that ethos is in the product itself. For instance, if you're pouring a nice olive oil over your salad or taking time to do your skincare routine. What do you think?

We had this concept of making everyday extraordinary and having that be a filter through which we design products. You know, my background is olive oil. And so that was the natural first product we started with. 10 years ago was our California extra virgin olive oil. And I really appreciate that olive oil is this common denominator. We all have dietary hangups and restrictions and allergies. And olive oil is just this universal common denominator. Everyone's got it in their pantry. Everyone cooks and eats with it. We asked ourselves how could you make this touchstone that we all have in our lives really special ?

I tried to think about that as we explored skin care and hair care and body care– what are these elemental practices, despite your age, gender, socioeconomic status, etc, what are these practices we all have? What are the touch points to our day and how could we make those things really exceptional? It's a really nice feeling that Wonder Valley is a part of. These routines, you know, in your bathroom, in your kitchen, it's just a part of your life. Because the thing is, the objects we interact with matter if you allow them,  they don't have to be used on autopilot. I think we're seeing a shift towards that, that people are getting a beautiful olive oil and putting it on the countertop rather than having it hide in a pantry. That's definitely the hook. The packaging is for sure the hook, but what keeps them coming back is what's inside is day enhancing.  

We're picking mostly Tuscan varietals, we're picking it earlier in the season. We're starting during the last few weeks of October. The first few weeks of November is our cycle usually, versus the latter half of November into December. If you think about picking blueberries, if you're letting a blueberry sit on the bush and let it be super, super ripe, you can just shake that bush and they're gonna fall right off and they're gonna be really sweet. But if you're picking them early in the season where they're just still green and a little blue, they're going to have tart and have a really acidic flavor profile. Olive oil is no different. You're getting an underripe fruit and capturing more of that greenness and that brightness to it. So, from a flavor perspective, I think Wonder Valley has some pretty unparalleled dynamic flavor profiles in terms of vibrancy while still being very well balanced. 

Aside from being attention grabbing, I'm very proud that our packaging has been a hundred percent plastic free since day one, which is a personal ethos of mine that trickles into the brand priorities. The whole thing is plastic free, which I think as an object feels really good in your hand, but I'm also thinking about the life cycle beyond its use and the ease of recycling and repurposing also, which I think is a wonderful thing.

Do you have any tips for how the average consumer can spot a quality olive oil?

Well, there's a few things you could start with before getting to tasting, which is just evaluating the packaging. First and foremost, an honest producer is going to tell you the harvest date. It's within my rights as a producer to say this is going to expire in seven years but that's not true. It's got like two years, but there's a lot of murkiness, miseducation, and lack of regulatory obligations for olive oil.

It's a fruit juice, so it doesn't age like wine. You'll want to analyze the back of the bottle, read the fine print, particularly for foreign imports. You want to make sure it's coming from one location and that's to ensure quality control. So oftentimes, at least cheaper food store oils, you'll see, "Tuscan Olive Oil." And then you read on the back “product of Tunisia, Greece, Spain, and Italy.” And what that tells you is there's no one person vouching for when this oil is picked and harvested. It's usually a lot of people's older oils blended in a batch by a third party.

So single origin is really essential. You want to make sure it's in non transparent, darker glass or metal, not plastic because there are a lot of concerns on microplastic ingestion. For imported oils that are traveling, usually shipping containers are at higher temperatures and it's just not a good thing. Most people also store their olive oil bottles right next to their stove even though that's not the best place for them. So temperature control is important and metal and dark colors help protect the integrity and the health benefits of the oil, which you're paying for. You know, it's not just a food condiment. You're paying for this living, vibrant, antioxidant rich superfood.

I think those are the places to start with. But ultimately tasting is going to be a really great way to tell. You do not have to be a sommelier to be able to sniff and taste out a truly extra virgin grade. Extra virgin grade just means that it's free of defects. There's about a dozen defects that all happen from the time it's fruit on a tree to oil in a bottle. And each of those tastes and smells really different to a trained palate. But generally they all taste like things that are not natural. A common one is when it goes rancid, when it starts to oxidize and get old. The common flavors for that are like old peanut butter or paraben wax. It gets a funny yuck. So if you're tasting it and it's bringing to mind flavors that feel natural, whether that's fruity or anything that grew out of the earth, you're at a good spot. How it feels in your mouth is a good indicator. If you're having a sip and you feel like you have to wipe your mouth, it's usually getting greasy and heavier and oxidizing. Do not be deterred by that cough and that spiciness. That bitterness and pungency is a good indicator. People know quality, they just have to be empowered to trust their guts.

You mentioned earlier that Wonder Valley Olive Oil bottles are entirely recyclable. When it comes to sustainability, what does that mean to you and your business? I love the refill pouches that we just started carrying at Clove & Creek, that's such a great way to reduce waste. It seems like sustainability is something that's been baked into the brand from the beginning.

There's a lot of lenses to look at sustainability. For me it's never a finished job. Like there's new materials, there's new ways to think about things. There's new data, there's new pros and cons. So it's a lifelong commitment. For me, if I'm doing my job well, there's thousands of bottles of olive oil that go on the earth and after people use them up, what happens then? Ease of recyclability, I think, is really important. I try to use materials that have endless capabilities, like aluminum and glass, that can just have an open ended loop. I think I'm really down on plastic, just because the more I educate myself, the more it feels like a dead end, you know? When I peel back a lot of the greenwashing on recycled plastic and ocean recycled plastic, it's just nonsense. You cannot make plastic without new plastic. It always has to have virgin plastic in it. So that's already like a weird thing. Plastic only has one to two rounds of upcyclability and then that's it. It's done. It's not in perpetuity.

The refill program is a really interesting thing for me because the customers really wanted it and it took me a while to really get there. The plastic is not a perfect solution, but it's a really big step in the right direction for a dedicated customer. To them, they get the benefits of cost savings. It's about 20 percent savings versus them just buying three bottles. They have it just on tap at home, which is really great.

My understanding is that the inputs are quite low for producing plastic versus other things. So to answer your question, when it comes to sustainability, are we looking at the end cycle of it? The energy and inputs to make it? The ease of repurposing it? There's so many ways to think about it, but I came to that conclusion because that was ultimately the best vessel for that material and the lowest input. Unfortunately it's not mono. It's aluminum lined with a plastic exterior. There are places you can take them to called TerraCycle where they'll upcycle those bags, but there's a lot of limitations on plastics. I think we'll keep getting there, and I think it's honestly consumers and small brands that challenge and disrupt the industry because we'll keep asking for better solutions.

Do you have any sustainability breakthroughs that you feel proud of?

The aluminum bottled hair care was a huge win. Those are costly and timely to produce. We produce them in Portugal and they're made by a really quality, family owned factory. Those are just pure aluminum, can be curbside recycled, and the pump is monoplastic, so that can also be recycled. That was a huge win because, commonly, a lot of people are using plastics for their hair care. It makes sense, it dispenses easily and it doesn't break, but as you continue to make something more common other brands adapt. I'm seeing the switch to aluminum happen in big and small brands. I don't say we invented it in any way, but if we can contribute to expanding that cause of using less plastic and more aluminum, I think that's positive.

What’s up for Wonder Valley?

I'm working on a beautiful body lotion and hand wash, which is really exciting and furthers the aluminum bottle collection. A hand wash that I think will be really special. The body lotion will be interesting because we've just been such an oils brand, so I think for lotion lovers, we're really striking a balance for a really deeply nourishing and effective and not watered down lotion. I'm working on a personal fragrance, which will be really fun and that should be in the spring and a few more like home and bath care items that hopefully will be in the fall. But there's a few things I'm cooking up my sleeve.