FOCUS ON THE PELOPONNESE

The highest quality of high phenolic olive oil and olives are back!

Published in

Beyond Organic, Beyond Extra Virgin

6 min readApr 21, 2017

The Peloponnese is the welcoming hand of Greece out stretched to greet the weary travellers looking for safe harbour. The Peloponnese points in all directions attached to the mainland with a sliver of 6 kilometres of land. The Isthmus canal was carved out joining the Saronic with the Ionian Sea to the west. This is the place where it all began hundreds or even perhaps thousands of years before Athens even existed.

This is where the struggle for supremacy began between two rival tribes locked in a duel to the death; the Ionians and the Dorians. These two mythological tribes have determined the path of world history. Ionians were the artists the philosophers the builders. The Dorians were the warriors and the builders; their legendary prowess and militaristic societies were best exemplified by the Spartans. The Ionians were eventually forced out of the Peloponnese and settled in Attica home of the future Athens. This is how the story goes… but there is evidence the Ionians were great warriors as well, and the Dorians were perhaps the first philosophers and artists. The biggest crime against humanity was the deliberate destruction of the knowledge they possessed. We are only now beginning to regain bits and pieces of it. It has taken over 2,500 years for us to understand why these people regarded early harvest olive oil made form specific olive trees was medicinal in nature. Certain modern academic “barbarians” are still waging war and opposing research into the medicinal properties of the phenolic compounds in olive oil.

In the harsh conditions and mountainous terrain there could only be one to dominate. There is a deep mystery in the Peloponnese that still awaits patiently to be explained; the archaeological evidence of a much older civilisation is everywhere but archaeological excavations are under funded and the thousands of areas of interest are generally ignored. The Mycenean civilisation still waits to be unearthed and understood. The obvious paradoxes all around us. The Hellenic language has the most words of any other by far. It is far more complex than any other and the ancient Hellenes even invented suffixes, prefixes and vowels.

The Peloponnese is filled with paradoxes, contradictions, mysteries and wonder. This is where the revolt against the Ottoman empire began and which led to Greek independence after 400 years of occupation. Peloponnese is a story of survival, courage and the root of many of stories described by Homer in the Iliad.

This is where the Olympics was born where the victorious athletes were awarded an olive wreath. Also the Nemean games where the winners received a wreath of wild celery leaves from the city of Argos. Then there were the Isthmian Games or Isthmia was started by Sisiphus founder and King of Corinth where again the victorious athletes were awarded a wreath of wild celery later it consisted of pine leaves. Across from the north side of Peloponnese at the Pythian games on the mainland at Delphi the award was a wreath made of bay leaves. In these games were in honor of Apollo so they focused on art and dance competitions.

The consistency of choosing to honour the victorious athletes with wreaths made from the wild olive tree, wild celery, pine leaves and bay leaves points to a direct connection being made between nutrition and athletic performance. This is the key to understanding how advanced their training methods were. Only recently in the west has nutrition been recognised as vitally important for not only athletic performance but also for health and longevity.

It also points to the use of the wild olive tree and its fruit for making olive oil and table olives. A vast amount of their knowledge has been lost but the knowledge of the health benefits of high phenolic EVOO are back.

Peloponnese is also home of the most famous olive in the world the Kalamon variety which contains extremely high concentrations of phenolic compounds. The olive oil made from the Kalamon variety has broken all the records for phenolic content.

Beyond the ones that took part in the Aristoleo awards 2017 there are a lot more high phenolic EVOOs produced in the Peloponnese. Here are the EVOOs and the olives we discovered and awarded for their high phenolic content and for their flawless taste during the Aristoleo Awards 2017.

Beyond Organic Beyond Extra Virgin conference will explore the marketing potential of high phenolic EVOO, agroecology and olive grove management May 6–7 2017 in Nicosia at the Univ. of Cyprus

KORONEIKI Peloponnese

SILVER — E-LA-WON — 1135mg per kg oleocanthal & oleacein

SILVER — ELEGIA — 940mg per kg total phenols

LADOLIA OLYMPIA

OLEO — Honorary GOLD

952mg per kg of total phenols

628mg per kg of oleocanthal & oleacein

434mg per kg of oleocanthal

ATHINOLIA Organic — Honorary GOLD

Sotirale bio Elea’s Poema ode1 Greece Honorary GOLD

637mg per kg of total phenols

275mg per kg of oleocanthal & oleacein

MANAKI/KORONEIKI Organic,

ELEADA Athanasios Rekleitis — Honorary GOLD

342mg per kg of oleocanthal & oleacein

ELEAGROS Theodoros Zoris Honorary SILVER

309mg per kg of oleocanthal & oleacein

TASTED TESTED & TRUE

ANAX olive oil (Tsonis — Akritochori Messinias).

708mg/kg anaxoliveoil@gmail.com

209mg per kg of oleocanthal

MANI BLAUEL SINGLE VARIETY 630 mg

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Hardly anything is more dangerous than doing business out of greed.
Hardly anything is more fun than doing business out of love for the world!
Fritz Bläuel

RACHI OF MANI 687 mg/kg

Nikos Petropoulakis Olive Groves
Since 1690

Our family continues to cultivate our super-centenarian olive groves (100% Koroneiki variety) the traditional way and always in compliance with the global Organic Standards.