About

Every Greek house has a stock of olive oil, including this one. My γιαγια (Greek Grandma) was born Demitra Aretoula Zoubaki  in a very small, quiet village called Epitalio, near the west coast of the Peloponnese, in 1921. Daughter of Stavroula and Aristedes Zoubaki, the local railway signalman, and the eldest of eight siblings, she grew up surrounded by olive groves, which peppered the landscape from the hills to the nearby coast. Freshly-pressed olive oil was part of her daily diet. Toula (Aretoula) left Greece for the UK in 1947, having met and fallen in love with my grandfather Denis, a young British soldier, at a dance in Syntagma Square in Athens, shortly after the end of the Second World War.

Post-war Britain was a far cry from rural Greece. Rationing meant that Toula had to source her olive oil from an unusual place (to today’s shoppers): the local chemist, where it was dispensed to treat earaches. It was as a young girl, in γιαγιά’s kitchen, that I first recalled her large canister of olive oil. By that time, in the 1980s, olive oil was easier to come by. She used it in many of her recipes: drizzled over traditional Greek salads and Dakos to Pastitsio and Dolmades. Yιαγιά sadly passed away in 2010, aged 95. All but one of her siblings have passed now too, but each lived into a ripe old age. Perhaps their Greek diets – including their family made olive oil – contributed to their longevity.

Passing through the generations, my parents have taught my sons, Theo and Makis, and I the art of producing our family’s extra virgin olive oil.

It’s all for the love of olive oil!

Eleni-Maria