Making Olive Oil in Sun-Drenched Hot Spot

Not many places on Earth can match the beauty of Mykonos, Santorini, and the other islands of the Cyclades com­plex at the Aegean Sea. And rest assured that you will come across famous actors, pop stars, and other celebri­ties from around the world who every sum­mer flock to these small specks of land in the sea for a vibrant vaca­tion.

Tourism is the main dri­ving force of the local econ­omy, but not many know that there is more to it than beau­ti­ful beaches, all night long club­bing, and non­stop amuse­ment.

The islands are prac­ti­cally water­less — reser­voirs, a few wells, and some desali­na­tion facil­i­ties cover the demand. The ter­rain is harsh and arid, but the locals there man­age to grow veg­eta­bles, cit­rus trees, vine­yards, and olive trees.

According to the Department of Agriculture of the Cyclades, the local pro­duc­tion of olive oil came in at around 430 tons for the 2016/17 har­vest­ing sea­son. Most of the small islands have their own olive oil mill: Syros has two oil mills and Amorgos, Ios, Milos, Sifnos, and Kimolos have one mill each that also cover the needs of other islands where no such facil­i­ties exist.

In Mykonos, ​‘EROS’ is the local coop­er­a­tive of wine and olive oil pro­duc­ers set to pro­mote the indige­nous vari­eties of wine and the cul­ti­va­tion of olive trees.

Dimitris Rousounelos, a food writer and the head of the coop­er­a­tive, spoke with Olive Oil Times about mak­ing olive oil on the island and the dif­fi­cul­ties the pro­duc­ers face.

“Due to the mor­phol­ogy of the island, there are no extended olive groves here. Olive trees are planted in con­fined places or on the edges of other cul­ti­va­tions. This is also because the land is more valu­able for touris­tic devel­op­ment than agri­cul­tural pur­poses.” he noted.

“During the last 12 years our coop­er­a­tive has given away about 15,000 olive trees and I cal­cu­late that today there are around 30,000 trees on the island. We try to occa­sion­ally water the trees despite the dry ter­rain. The cul­ti­var used is the Koroneiki and we also have the Kalamon and Amfissas cul­ti­vars for table olives”, he said.

Even though the cul­ti­va­tion of olive trees is lim­ited on the island, Rousounelos was very enthu­si­as­tic about it and said, ​“We have already orga­nized three sem­i­nars and tast­ing events on olive oil. Our oil meets high stan­dards but can­not be clas­si­fied as extra vir­gin yet because the olives are shipped for pro­cess­ing to Tinos, Andros, and some­times to mills in Attica. So the time required for pro­cess­ing degrades our prod­uct to lower cat­e­gories”.

Harvesting on the island begins in mid-October and ends in late November, although some olives are ready to be har­vested by late September.

“Several pro­duc­ers would like to begin har­vest­ing sooner than usual, in order to get oil of bet­ter qual­ity and fra­grance, but they have to be syn­chro­nized with the oil mills on the other islands which open in October,” Rousounelos said.

“We hope that by next year we will have a munic­i­pal mill here. This will be a long-awaited achieve­ment and a great boost for the local olive oil pro­duc­tion in terms of quan­tity. But the best part is that it will enable us to finally make the extra vir­gin olive oil of Mykonos, a big plus for our every­day table and for the restau­rants and hotels that will be able to serve local EVOO to their cus­tomers. We want to redis­cover our roots in grow­ing and pro­duc­ing local qual­ity prod­ucts as an alter­na­tive to the mono­cul­ture of tourism,” he con­cluded.

In Santorini, wine is the main prod­uct of the island, but accord­ing to the local agri­cul­tur­ist Giorgos Skopelitis, the olive trees have started to advance expo­nen­tially dur­ing the pre­vi­ous years.

“There are a lot of olive trees on the island and they get more and more every year. What hap­pens here is that the olive groves are scat­tered all around, so one can­not eas­ily com­pre­hend the mag­ni­tude of the groves because they are frag­mented. And this is why we do not have a clear view of the exact acres uti­lized for the cul­ti­va­tion of olive trees,” Skopelitis told us.

The Koroneiki cul­ti­var is used in Santorini and the har­vest usu­ally starts in late October. ​“The olive trees are not watered since water resources are scarce. After all, it is com­mon knowl­edge that non-irri­gated olive trees give the best oil although the oil com­ing out here is usu­ally clas­si­fied as vir­gin since we do not have the means to make extra vir­gin olive oil,” Skopelitis added.

“There is a small oil mill on the island which oper­ated for a few years but is now idle because it had some prob­lems acquir­ing an oper­at­ing license. The local pro­duc­ers have their olives shipped to Naxos, Ios, or even Crete. This is obvi­ously a prob­lem and it would be a huge advan­tage for them if the mill could open again allow­ing them to pro­duce olive oil of higher qual­ity with­out send­ing the crop away.”

Mykonos, Santorini, and all the so-called small islands of the Cyclades com­plex have their fair share of mak­ing olive oil, either by grow­ing olive trees or by pro­cess­ing olives. For the cur­rent year, a sub­sidy of more than €9 mil­lion ($10.74 mil­lion) of European Union and state funds will be pro­vided to local pro­duc­ers as an incen­tive to keep their tra­di­tional olive groves and not switch to another kind of cul­ti­va­tion.

Their con­tri­bu­tion to the total olive oil pro­duc­tion of Greece may be small, but the islands show that olive trees exist even on inhos­pitable ter­rain and, with a lit­tle care and love they can give back tons of olive oil.

• EROS, coop­er­a­tive of wine and olive oil pro­duc­ers of Mykonos


• Agronews