Papadopoulos Olive Oil

The mill, told properly

The Papadopoulos family has worked olive land in Ilia, in the western Peloponnese near Ancient Olympia, for generations, and in 1989 they built a modern mill there to press what the ground around them had always grown. The area carries an old, local olive called Olympia, or Nemoutiana, said to have grown there for more than 1,500 years and nearly lost before the family set about reviving it. It carries markedly more phenolic compounds than most olives, especially oleocanthal, the compound behind that peppery catch at the back of the throat. Alongside it they grow Koroneiki, the workhorse variety of Greek groves. Their flagship, Omfacium Organic High-Phenolic, takes its name from an ancient method of pressing oil from olives picked while still unripe, and is made almost entirely from the Olympia fruit. The mill has entered the New York International Olive Oil Competition year after year and now holds 54 awards there, and it sits among the Top 10 producers worldwide in the EVOO World Ranking, with several of its oils counted among Greece's best. Under an agreement with the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, the mill also harvests olives from trees growing at Ancient Olympia itself, at the Acropolis in Athens, at Delphi, and at Messene, pressing small batches of oil from groves standing beside some of the oldest ruins in the country.

From the public record: papadopoulosoliveoil.com · themastermiller.com · oliveoiltimes.com