How this olive oil affair began…
On the left, a photo taken on the day I arrived in Mystras; prophetically the date on the blue sign reads 12 October. Top right, part of the ruins as they were then. And a postcard, addressed but never sent, which I've kept from way back then.
by Michael Lamb, Founder of Olivver.
My romance with olive oil began a long time ago, when I was 21 and roaming Greece with just a couple of books and a few old clothes in a tattered orange pack.
One perishingly hot day I found myself walking along a sun-baked road towards the ancient Byzantine village of Mystras, deep in the Peloponnese.
The house marking the entrance to the village had small sign that said something in Greek about 12 October. Strange, I thought, the date of my birthday.
That night I slept rough in the ancient ruins, restless on the sharp gravel. In the small hours I woke to see an eerie firelight in the ruins, and the morning revealed another traveller had passed the night there as well.
A few days later, and along with my new friend, a medical student called Seb from Heidelberg, I found myself living in an abandoned house in the village.
Somehow, between waking up in the ruins and making our way back down to the main square we had become friends - and come up with the idea of staying a while.
Some old men, the kind that used to sit endlessly in small Greek villages playing backgammon and flicking their worry beads, had said we could help ourselves to a house. There were plenty abandoned by families who had moved to America.
The house was dusty but far from derelict. It was still furnished, with religious icons on the walls, plates and cutlery in the cupboards and gallons of olive oil in a large vat.
We passed the time doing very little: reading, talking - and subsisting on our go-to dish of beautiful big, fresh tomatoes, thinly sliced and laid out on a plate, sprinkled with dried ‘rigani’ (oregano) and a little salt and drizzled with plenty of olive oil. With a fresh loaf of crusty bread, it was food of the gods.
When we wanted more robust sustenance we would walk the long road to Sparti - known through history as Sparta. A basement restaurant there served giant portions of moussaka, courgette bakes and other sublime dishes, all swimming in gorgeous green Greek olive oil, and all for just a few drachma.
As time went by we became aware of another ‘foreigner’ living a few houses away from us - a Swiss artist called Elizabeth who had fled her life in Zurich to find respite in Mystras.
She widened our horizons. She knew the olive groves and we'd walk through them in the late afternoons, the occasional snake rearing up in our path. And spend hours laying under the gentle Mediterranean sun, using only olive oil as tanning lotion, turning ever deeper shades of nut brown.
Day passed like this. Eventually, the chill fingers of reality reached in to dismantle the idyll: Seb headed back to Heidelberg and the serious matter of becoming a doctor, Elizabeth declared her need for solitude… and I put my books and clothes in my old orange pack and headed east to Turkey.
But the olive groves have always stayed with me… and of course the olive oil we lived on, a common thread through that summer long ago in Mystras.
