Eric Kaltenbach, Treasurer
Eric moved to Paso Robles with his wife Candice in 2015 and purchased property that included an olive orchard with over 1,100 olive trees. They now produce award winning extra virgin olive oil and operate a popular vacation rental cottage. Being a process improvement driven, hate to continually fix it type of person, Eric immediately started improving every aspect of the operation. After a year of research, he replaced the entire irrigation system using newer techniques such as subterranean drip for their grapevines and repositioning the drip emitters to more effectively water the olive trees due to steep slopes. He also added a weather station to calculate ET (evapotranspiration), and to save even more water instituted a deficit irrigation program developed by UC Davis to reduce water and maintain olive oil quality. Eric was born in Orange County California where he participated in many tennis tournaments and actively raced sailboats winning first-in-class in the 2004 Newport to Ensenada sailboat race. He received a BS in Business Administration in 1982 from Cal-Poly Pomona and an MBA from Pepperdine in 1997. He spent most of his career working in finance and accounting for both large and small corporations. From 2008 to 2014 Eric was Group Controller/CFO for a large multi-franchise auto group in Orange County. The auto group was sold in 2014 so Eric relocated to Paso Robles to enjoy an active retirement. Eric also serves on the board of the Central Coast Olive Growers and he is a member of the California Olive Oil Council.