Origin
Koroneiki is the most planted olive in Greece, and one of the most respected anywhere on the planet. The tree is small and hardy. The fruit is tiny, far smaller than the olives most people picture on a plate. There is little flesh on each, and so little oil, which is exactly the point. What comes out of these wonderful olives is concentrated, and alive with character.
Our grove is Koroneiki. One variety, one place. There is no blending, no rounding-off of one olive against another. What is in the bottle is a rarity: the taste of a single fruit, grown in a single grove, in a single year.
What it gives
Picked green, as we pick it, Koroneiki makes an oil that is grassy and sharp, with a clear bitterness and a peppery finish. Picked late, it softens and turns mild and golden. Neither is wrong. They are simply different oils from the same tree, and we have chosen the first: green, early, and full of the character that only comes from unripe fruit.
Koroneiki olives are robust, too. They hold their flavour and freshness longer than most, which matters for an oil meant to be used rather than saved.
Where it grows
The grove sits in the hills south of Kaina, in Apokoronas, at around 226 metres. It is high ground, on a south-facing slope, a long way from the sea. The nights are cool, the light is good, and the air is dry. Koroneiki thrives in these conditions, and the place shows in the oil.
Old field-names still cling to the ground here, Lakkoi and Kotsifalia, from a time when every plot had a name. The trees are worked by hand and otherwise left much to themselves, the way olives have been grown here for a very long time.
Why one variety
There is a reason wine talks about a single grape, a single vineyard, a single year. It is the same instinct here. A single-variety, single-grove oil tastes of somewhere specific. It naturally changes a little from harvest to harvest, because the weather does. That is never a flaw to be corrected. It is the honest record of a specific place and a season.
