The ancient Greeks perfected the art of extracting the precious juice from the olive fruit and passed on this knowledge from one generation to the next.
With the advent of the Roman Empire, a lot of these methods were transferred to other civilizations residing in the Mediterranean basin.
These countries, however, do not have access to the most important attribute of what originally made Extra Virgin Olive Oil such a potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory food. The Koroneiki olive variety is indisputably the crown jewel of oil producing olives. A lot less oil is extracted from this olive vs. the inferior varieties found in Spain and Morocco (Arbequina and Picual), or even worse from the mission variety found in California which was originally not even intended to be an oil producing cultivar but was grown as a table olive instead (and which is actually an offspring of a subpar Moroccan cultivar).
The superiority of the Koroneiki variety is evident by the fact that Italian producers are the dominant buyers of Greek olive oil which they then use to blend with local varieties, to improve the flavor profile of “Italian” olive oil. This is the reason why the majority of “Italian” olive oil brands say “packaged in Italy” instead of “produced in Italy” in their retail packaging.
So why are you wasting time and money buying imitation EVOO of dubious origin like Morocco, Tunisia or Turkey when you can buy the real deal? Olive Oil produced from the same olive trees that gave birth to the Mediterranean diet which is featured in the cuisine of one of the famous blue regions of the world, Ikaria of Greece.
