How we got here
A decade long search for the FRESHEST OLIVE oil
We import our oil direct from the mill in the UNESCO biosphere of the Sierra de las Nieves to Scotland, where we bottle it. No long distribution chains, no expensive bottles or branding, just the tastiest, healthiest olive oil we could find, direct from a sustainably farmed reserve and a traditional community. We work with Cris to guarantee the continued highest standards of the oil for health and flavour, building on his understanding of the processes and science of olives and Simon's understanding of human health.
One evening in January ten years ago I poured a thick emerald stream of olive oil over a stew of chard and chickpeas. The chilly whitewashed room was filled with a warm green smell of fresh cut grass and growing things, crisp apples and summer. And when I lifted the spoon, I doubted everything I thought I knew about olive oil.
I had picked up an unlabelled plastic bottle from the floor of the only shop in a remote village high in the Andalusian mountains. Normally I bought extra virgin oil in beautiful bottles with elegant labels, for ten times the price of this. But none of them had ever filled a room, and my mouth, with an aroma anything like that.
Perhaps the difference was in the freshness of the unfiltered oil, pressed only a month before, during the winter olive harvest? Back in the UK the following winter I tried and failed to find fresh-pressed oil at Christmas, but my favourite brands did not expect to receive any until summer. I tried more and more expensive brands, in hope of recapturing that moment. I found ways of getting oil sent direct from the Mediterranean, but for all the hassle and damage to my pocket, it never tasted anything like that mouthful.
Years later, I met Simon - a biology professor devoted to the fight against ageing. We began to talk about olive oil. The same molecules that make that scent of glowing summer, he told me, are used by our bodies to combat the inflammation which is the first step towards the development of cancer and many of the most common and devastating diseases. An oil that tasted that good would also do wonders for health.
And so we set off on a quest for an oil that good. We drove thousands of miles, first trying branded oils in exhibitions, and then begging for a taste at mills where the oil was just pressing, flowing from the spouts in vivid streams. We found that the smaller and more remote the mill, the better the oil. But still nothing quite matched my memory, which I began to think must have been a dream.
On our last day we visited the tiny village where I bought the oil a decade before. At the mill we struggled to get the attention of miller Cristobal, who was answering his phone, running around adjusting his machines, and trying to control the donkeys and quad bikes who had just arrived in the yard laden with olives. At last he swaggered to the tap, filled a round-bottom glass, and passed it to us to try. One sniff and I began to hope: one sip and I knew our quest was over.
Cris's family has run the village mill for many generations, and he never met anyone from outside Spain until he left home at 18. He lives in the family home above the mill. His mother is a famous local beauty, said to be made eternally youthful by her olive oil. Through the winter Cris is always busy, as each of the families from the village arrives to feed their harvest through his press. But he loves all things high tech and modern, and has worked tirelessly to make use of the latest science to guarantee the quality of his oil. He had already sent samples to the lab for analysis, and we were not surprised to see his astonishing results: his free acidity level was eight times lower than the maximum recommended for high quality extra virgin olive oil, and the all-important number of polyphenols - those wonderful smelling and tasting, anti-inflamatory, health giving compounds - was far, far higher than anything else we had ever seen.
Cris presses early, when the olives are highest in flavour and health benefits, and always presses l as soon as they are picked. Everything is controlled to keep the oil cool and preserve its flavour. But the olives with which he works are simply exceptional: the tiny groves and wild-growing olive trees in the high mountains produce extra polyphenols to protect themselves from frost and snow in winter, savage heat and drought in summer, and to survive on the steep slopes and cliffs of rugged limestone. Never watered or treated with fertiliser or herbicides, protected from pests and pollution by the belt of wild pines below the village, and carpeted with wild flowers in spring, the tough highland life in the groves is ideally suited to promote the highest possible levels of healthy and delicious polyphenols.
