Collaboration Through Honest Toil

Over a decade ago, he and Juli spent a month harvesting in the Peloponnese, leaving them with 200 bottles of olive oil as payment for their work. They sold them – 100% Koroneiki Extra Virgin Olive Oil – at Berlin’s flea markets in the run up to Christmas. Today, they work with 50 independent growers in the region to produce Honest Toil.

Picked and pressed in November, their new season extra virgin olive oil landed in December. Try it in these first few months when the flavours are at their most expressive: young and grassy with a vibrant lingering pepperiness.

'In Greece, everyone is an olive farmer'

Tom and Juli work with Koroneiki Olives: a variety native to Messenia and prized for its low acidity levels. In 2013, Honest Toil was still in its infancy and with only 280 trees, their production was limited.

In a region with such a rich history of olive growing, it was clear to them that collaborating with local growers was preferable to buying up more land. Not only would it preserve years of growing knowledge but it offered smaller growers a route to market that would champion the flavour and provenance of their olive oil at a fair price. Whether they have three trees, or 300, all the growers in the Honest Toil cooperative can contribute to the final harvest.

'That first piece of bread under the press is the best it gets'

Growers take their harvest to the press within hours of picking, eager for the first and freshest taste of the season’s olive oil. Here, the old style presses extract far less from the olives than newer, industrial machines. While yield is lower, this avoids the unpleasant bitterness you find in over extracted commercial oils, pressed with literage, rather than flavour in mind.