Some 13 years ago, shoppers had a lot of questions about a new storefront on Bethlehem’s Main Street. “I remember people peeking through the windows, saying ‘what is this? Is this coffee, or wine? What’s it doing here?’” recalls Soraya Aguilar. She and her husband, Tim Balshi, are the owners of Seasons Olive Oil & Vinegar Taproom, which is now, a decade-plus later, firmly entrenched as a downtown shopping destination.
Their oils are sought after by top-tier restaurants and chefs in the Lehigh Valley and beyond, as well as home cooks looking for an upgrade from the typical, mass-produced bottles that clutter supermarket shelves.
But there was a time when high-quality extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) was a much harder sell. “We were the pioneers of it in a very early time when the Food Network wasn’t pervasive,” Balshi says. “The word ‘foodie’ didn’t exist at the time.” He remembers what those inquisitive shoppers in Bethlehem told them during the store’s infancy: “We hope you’re here in a year.”
Aguilar and Balshi first crossed paths as students at Bethlehem Catholic High School in the mid-1990s. Aguilar was an exchange student from Spain, where she grew up on her family’s sprawling, third-generation olive farm in Jaen, a province in a region called Andalusia in the southern part of the country. According to Seasons’ website, Andalusia produces 80 percent of Spain’s olive oil, and more EVOO than any other olive-growing region in the world. Aguilar would return to those roots as a young adult, but this time with Balshi by her side as a partner in more than one sense of the word.
Post-college graduation, both had corporate jobs in New York City for a bit, but the September 11th terrorist attacks of 2001 forced a change of perspective, and they decided to trade in those careers for a different kind of grind. “We thought it would be a great idea to start importing the oil to the United States,” Aguilar says.
The couple moved to Spain for several months where they got married and spent a lot of time at the Aguilar family’s estate, learning the business. It was a homecoming of sorts not just for Aguilar but for Balshi as well, who had first visited the property at 18 years old after graduating from high school. He was a quick convert to their style of flavorful olive oils. “I couldn’t believe how amazing it tasted,” he says. Balshi recalls the oil being a part of just about everything they ate—from French fries to ice cream. “It was an epiphany for me.” He also soaked in the intricacies of the EVOO-making process during a year he spent studying abroad in Spain during college.
When the couple decided to go all-in on their new professions, the Aguilar family was only selling the oil in bulk in Europe. Soraya and Tim hoped to sell it to upscale food markets, restaurants and gourmets in the states, but getting that import enterprise off the ground became a lesson in tenacious salesmanship. “You’re basically going shop to shop, doing demonstrations, old-school style,” Balshi says. He estimates they logged thousands of miles and thousands of hours across several states, educating potential customers about their products. “It really was from the ground up,” Aguilar adds, of building the business.
Their perseverance did pay off. They attracted the attention (and the dollars) of iconic New York City institutions like Fig & Olive and Murray’s Cheese. Their chef clientele included Daniel Boulud, Jean-Georges, Rich Torrisi, Craig Koketsu and Aaron Bludorn. In 2010 the couple opened their first brick-and-mortar location at 504 Main Street in Bethlehem (they moved to a bigger space down the street in 2014). And yes, the idea of a taproom for olive oil did eventually catch on with customers, once they figured out what to make of the rows of stainless-steel drums and sample-size cups. Balshi and Aguilar have since opened supplemental Seasons locations in Annapolis, MD; Lancaster and Hershey; and, most recently, at the new Belleville Market in Easton.
And while the term “taproom” does usually have boozy connotations, the flavor profiles at Seasons rival that of any beer or wine list. Sweet butter, black truffle, ginger, blood orange and Persian lime are just a smattering of recent infusion options. There’s also a line of specialty oils and a variety of extra virgin olive oils that differ in their provenance and piquancy. But no matter how many samples even the most ardent of EVOO fans toss back, they’re unlikely to put up the same numbers as Balshi or Aguilar. Balshi estimates they’ve tasted 20,000 different olive oils. “It gets to the point where you can differentiate between each varietal,” Aguilar says. “If we’re tasting Arbequina, we can tell right away it’s an Arbequina. If we’re tasting Picual, we know it’s Picual.” Balshi taps the side of his head: “It’s all catalogued up here.”
... you have this green elixir that’s a bouquet of hundreds of different aromas and flavor sensations.
Those refined palates make it easy for them to detect when an extra virgin olive oil is manufactured in a way that’s not up to Seasons’ standards. The process is a lot more involved—and at the mercy of Mother Nature—than the average consumer might think. The olive harvest season is relatively short and can be hampered by weather that’s too rainy or too hot. At the family mill, Almazara Andres Aguilar, harvesting is done in three different ways. Olive groves that are considered traditional are all harvested by hand. Medium-density groves are harvested using vibrating rakes and trunk shakers with umbrellas. High-density groves are handled using machines called New Holland over-the-row olive harvesters. Regardless of the method, olives that hit the ground aren’t used to make their oil, even though it might be tempting to cut corners, since more olives are needed to make one of their batches of EVOO, compared to lower-quality alternatives. It’s a lot of work, but, when it’s done properly, “you have this green elixir that’s a bouquet of hundreds of different aromas and flavor sensations,” Balshi says.
While the output from the family estate initially formed the foundation of the couple’s business, they now source and import oils from high-quality mills and growers in a variety of countries. The harvest is rotated based on the seasons and climate conditions. Olives from suppliers in Spain and other Mediterranean countries are harvested in October and November. Locations in South America, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia get their turn in April and May. Seasons also employs a trio of agronomists to monitor the quality of the fruit and ensure that farmers are sticking to their pledge to stay pesticide-free.
As Seasons has evolved, so, too, have the couple’s roles. Balshi now primarily heads up MillPress Imports, the company’s wholesale operations, while Aguilar runs all of the retail shops. Their two daughters—Ana, 17, and Chloe, 12—pitch in, too. “They’re both olive oil fanatics because they’ve grown up with it,” says Balshi. They travel with their parents to the family mill in Spain every year. “They are actually the best sources of information when they’re at the store,” Aguilar adds. “They help a lot of customers. They’re able to explain how everything is done.”
Aguilar and Balshi haven’t ruled out adding even more Seasons locations down the line, but for now they’re focusing on e-commerce. Recently, though, they did launch something new that seems like a natural extension of their shared love of cooking and entertaining in their Bethlehem home. It’s a pasta sauce they’re calling Savori, slow cooked with San Marzano tomatoes and lots of fresh EVOO (naturally). And, like other locally sourced pantry items, it’s for sale at Seasons. Says Balshi: “We were like, ‘let’s make the highest-quality pasta sauce on planet Earth.’ I think we did it.”
seasonstaproom.com | millpressimports.com
Published as “Insight” in the November 2023 edition of Lehigh Valley Style magazine.
