For Batch 5, we've gone Greek, to that chunk of land west of Athens. The land of Spartans, olives and honey: the Pelopennese!
I visited for one sweaty week last July and met Pavlos, a farmer with an olive grove in the village of Parapougki - bang in the middle of the peninsular. His grove sits on a shrubby hillside with views over seemingly endless shrubby hillsides dotted with olive trees. There's a reassuring feeling that the olive tree is very much at home here.
Like most olive farmers I've met, olives are more than just a crop for Pavlos. The oil runs deep in the veins of the region and Pavlos' family has been making the stuff for three generations.
His trees all grow the famous Koroneiki olive variety. It's the native olive to this region, which has become the most common olive variety in Greece. An olive small in size, but with a surprisingly high oil yield (often up to a third of the olives' weight is oil) and low acidity.
TECHINICAL INFO
Class: Extra virgin olive oil obtained directly
from olives and solely by mechanical means.
Producer: Pavlos Kaplanis
Origin: Parapougki, Greece
Olive varieties: 100% Koroneiki
Harvest period: November 2023
Method: Hand harvested and pressed within 9 hours of picking.
Tasting notes: Compared to our previous oil from Puglia, this Koroneiki oil is a little more delicate. We'd say it's medium intense - less bitter and spicy, with flavour notes of fresh-cut grass, sweet almond and a hint of artichoke. You'll notice a light, peppery finish. It's an oil that can be a bit of an all-rounder, easy to use with a lot of dishes as it’s not going to overpower your food. See our recipes here.
NEW PACKAGING - WHY THE BAG?
1. Keeps your oil fresher for longer, retaining oil quality. These bags are vacuum packed, meaning they don't let oxygen in. After you've opened a normal bottle/tin of olive oil, the oxygen wafts in and the quality (i.e. freshness) starts to incrementally decline from day one. With these vacuum packed bags, your oil will stay fresher for much longer after you've opened. Win!
2. Smaller carbon footprint then glass. The carbon footprint of making glass (requires very high heat) and transporting it (they're heavy) is much higher than these bags.
3. Better for our wallets, means better for yours too. The bags are cheaper to buy, cheaper to transport from Greece and cheaper to post to the customer (they're lighter and require way less protective packaging). With the olive oil price hikes, any unnecessary costs we can pass onto you is important.
4. Easy to pour. Once you get the hang of pouring, it's easy to pour, and it doesn't drip down the side like a bottle or tin might!
THE LABEL
I liked the idea of honouring the oldest form of olive oil packaging on the label of the newest, the bag!
Batch 5's label is a terracotta lekythos (olive oil flask) from ancient Greece, dated 430–420 BC, featuring a youth on horseback.
You can find more information about this flask from the source,
here.
