From Crete to your kitchen: the story behind our olive oil
The Koroneiki olive has been grown in the hills above Heraklion for centuries. Here's the story of the family who grows ours — and why provenance is the most important ingredient in any pantry.
There's a particular quality of light in Crete in late October. The summer heat has softened, the tourists have gone, and the hillsides above Heraklion take on a silver-green shimmer as the olive groves prepare for harvest. It's the kind of light that makes you understand why people have been farming this island for four thousand years.
The Papadakis family has been farming their particular hillside for three generations. Their estate sits at around 400 metres above sea level — high enough to catch the cool nights that slow the ripening of the Koroneiki olive and concentrate its flavour, low enough to benefit from the long Mediterranean growing season. The soil is thin and rocky, which stresses the trees just enough to produce small, intensely flavoured fruit.
The Koroneiki olive
The Koroneiki is the dominant olive variety of Crete, and for good reason. It's extraordinarily well-adapted to the island's climate — drought-tolerant, disease-resistant, and capable of producing oil with a flavour profile that has no real equivalent anywhere else in the world.
The fruit is tiny — barely the size of a large grape — which means harvesting is slow and labour-intensive. A single tree might yield only a few kilograms of olives. But the oil-to-fruit ratio is high, and the flavour is exceptional: grassy and herbaceous on the nose, with a rich mid-palate and a long, peppery finish that signals high polyphenol content.
Most large producers have moved away from Koroneiki for exactly this reason. The economics of harvesting such small fruit at scale are challenging. The Papadakis family has never considered it.
Harvest
The Koroneiki harvest on the Papadakis estate runs from late October through November, depending on the year. The family picks by hand — or rather, by a combination of hand-raking and small mechanical combs that vibrate the olives loose without bruising the fruit. Bruised olives oxidise quickly, raising acidity and degrading flavour. Every decision in the harvest is made with the press in mind.
The olives are collected in shallow crates — never deep bins, which would crush the fruit at the bottom — and transported to the family's own press within hours of picking. In a good year, the gap between harvest and press is under four hours. In an exceptional year, it's less than two.
The press
The Papadakis press is a continuous two-phase system — the modern standard for high-quality oil production. The olives are washed, crushed into a paste, and then centrifuged to separate the oil from the water and solids. No heat is applied at any stage. The paste never exceeds 27°C, which is why the oil can legitimately be called cold-pressed.
The result is an oil with free acidity consistently below 0.2% — well below the 0.8% legal threshold for extra virgin, and a fraction of what you'd find in most commercial oils. Low acidity means fresh fruit, careful handling, and a press that happened quickly. It's the most reliable single indicator of quality.
Why provenance matters
We started Blue Olive Market because we believed that the story behind a product is inseparable from the product itself. Knowing where your olive oil comes from — not just the country, but the estate, the variety, the family, the harvest — changes the way you use it.
You don't cook with an oil like this. You finish with it. A drizzle over a bowl of hummus, a pour over grilled fish, a puddle on a plate of good bread. You use it where it can be tasted, because it deserves to be tasted.
That's the philosophy behind everything we stock. Not the cheapest. Not the most convenient. The most honest.
Our Single-Estate Extra Virgin Olive Oil is cold-pressed from Koroneiki olives grown on the Papadakis estate above Heraklion, Crete. Discover the full story and explore the collection.
