There is a particular quality of light on the north-facing slopes above Chania in late October, when the first olives are beginning to turn from pale green to a bruised violet. The groves here are old some of the trunks split and hollowed by centuries of Cretan wind and yet the nets spread beneath them are new, the crates stacked at the edge of the terraces are food-grade plastic rather than woven reed, and somewhere nearby a stainless-steel mill is being calibrated to within a fraction of a degree. This is the paradox at the heart of Cretan olive oil today: a product rooted in the Bronze Age, refined by the instruments of modern food science, and finally after generations of anonymity claiming its place among the finest oils in the world. An Island Built on Olive Oil Crete's relationship with the olive tree is not merely agricultural. It is civilisational. Carbonised olive stones found at Knossos date to the late Neolithic period; by the time the Minoan palaces reached their zenith around 1700 BCE, olive oil was a currency, a cosmetic, a fuel for lamps, and a sacred offering. The great pithoi storage jars taller than a man that still line the magazines of the palace of Knossos were built to hold oil, not wine. When Arthur Evans excavated the site at the turn of the twentieth century, he found remnants of an economy organised around the olive with a sophistication that would not be matched in northern Europe for another three millennia. That deep history is not merely decorat...
Unfiltered Cold-Pressed Olive Oil from Crete
Natural Koroneiki olive oil from our family grove in Crete
Shop Now