An Ancient Cretan Treasure
Long before olive oil became known around the world as one of the defining ingredients of the Mediterranean diet, the olive tree had already shaped the landscape and the lives of the people of Crete.
For thousands of years, olive cultivation has been part of the island’s history, economy and everyday life. From ancient settlements and family groves to village mills and the kitchens of today, the olive tree has remained a quiet but constant presence.
For the Tsouderos family, this connection is deeply personal.
Olive oil is not simply something we produce. It belongs to our memories, our traditions and our understanding of home. It connects one generation to the next and carries with it the landscape, work and values of the Cretan land.
From the Cradle to the Chapel
In Crete, olive oil has never belonged only to the kitchen. It is present in moments of faith, family and tradition throughout life.
The First Anointing
In the Orthodox sacrament of Baptism, olive oil is blessed and used to anoint the child before immersion in the baptismal water.
For generations of Cretan families, this has made olive oil part of one of the earliest and most meaningful ceremonies in a person’s life — associated with blessing, protection and the beginning of a spiritual journey.
The Light of the Kandili
Olive oil also burns quietly in the traditional kandili, the vigil lamp found in churches, small countryside chapels and many Cretan homes.
Its flame accompanies prayer and remembrance. For families who grew up with this tradition, the soft light of the kandili is inseparable from the familiar images of home: an icon, a moment of silence, the memory of someone loved.
Faith, Folklore and the Unseen
Olive oil also appears in Greek and Cretan folk traditions that exist alongside formal religious practice.
One of the most familiar is xematiasma, the traditional ritual associated with the belief in the evil eye. In some versions of the custom, drops of olive oil are placed in water as part of a prayer or ritual passed from one generation to another.
Whether understood through faith, folklore or family tradition, customs like these show how deeply olive oil has entered the cultural memory of everyday life.
More Than Food: A Measure of Life
For earlier generations, olive oil was much more than a flavour on the table.
A successful harvest represented food for the family, security for the household and income for the year ahead. Oil could be stored for long periods, traded and shared, making the olive harvest one of the most important moments in the rural calendar.
Every part of what the land provided was valued.
Olive oil also had a place in traditional household care, while olive-oil soap became part of everyday domestic life. Made using methods passed down through generations, it was used for washing clothes, cleaning the home and personal care.
Nothing was treated casually. Nothing was meant to be wasted.
That respect for the fruit, the land and the work required to produce it is perhaps one of the strongest lessons handed down by the older generations.
Memories Written in the Olive Groves
History can be recorded in books. Family history is often recorded differently.
It lives in smells, sounds, textures and gestures that remain with us long after childhood has passed.
For those of us who grew up among the olive trees, the harvest created its own sensory world.
The Scent of the Harvest
There is a particular smell when freshly harvested olives are bruised and gathered during the cool Cretan winter.
Green, sharp and unmistakable.
For us, that aroma is connected with much more than the fruit itself. It means winter mornings, work in the groves, relatives gathered together and the anticipation of the new olive oil.
One smell can bring an entire season back.
The Ritual of Sakiasma
Some memories are even more physical.
We remember spreading the nets beneath the olive trees and hearing the fruit fall. We remember gathering the olives and filling the woven sacks — the traditional sakiasma of the harvest.
And we remember pushing our bare hands deep into those sacks to make room for more fruit.
The olives would break slightly beneath our hands, releasing their intense green aroma. By the end of the day, our clothes, our skin and seemingly everything around us smelled of olive leaves and fresh fruit.
For a child growing up in an olive-producing family, these were not lessons taught in a classroom.
This was how you learned what olive oil meant.
You lived it.
The First Taste
Then came the reward: the olive mill.
Few memories compare with tasting the season’s first fresh oil — protolado — while it was still intensely green, fragrant and alive with the character of the newly harvested fruit.
A piece of rustic bread, warmed by the fire and generously covered with fresh olive oil, needed nothing else.
For us, that first taste meant the harvest had become something real.
The work of the land was finally on the table.
What We Carry Forward
For the Tsouderos family, producing olive oil today carries the weight of all these memories.
Behind every harvest are months of uncertainty: the weather, the trees, the fruit and the constant decisions required by the land. During harvest itself come the long days, tired bodies and hands marked by the work.
That is why we cannot see olive oil simply as a commodity.
Its value begins with the people who care for the trees and continues through every stage required to bring the fruit from the grove to the bottle.
Modern equipment, quality controls and international markets have changed the way we work. They have not changed what the olive tree means to us.
We still recognise the same aroma at harvest.
We still wait for the first oil of the season.
And we still understand that what we receive from the Cretan soil comes with a responsibility: to respect it, protect its quality and pass it on without losing the values that created it.
Taking our olive oil beyond Crete therefore means more to us than exporting a product.
It means sharing part of the place that formed us — its landscape, its traditions, its labour, its faith and its memories.
What comes from human hands is the work.
What comes from the land is the gift.
And for us, olive oil has always contained both.
