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Introduction
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One of the first considerations for many consumers when purchasing a product is the price. In the case of food, the pursuit of cheaper food products has led to industrialised farming, which includes genetic intervention in the DNA of many fruits and vegetables and the use of chemicals such as dioxins, which can be harmful. In fact, Nature prοvides the healthiest lubrication for our bodies: the juice of the olive. Thus, the best choice is virgin olive oil, a decision that should be made regardless of price. In the selection of good oil the second consideration is what pleases the palate. The best advice is to forget about the colourless and tasteless oils you have tried in the past.
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Cleanse the palate with a slice of green apple and savour the aromas and tastes of the olive oil. That means that the precious ingredients contained in the olive fruit have not been destroyed by human intervention; they have passed into its juice, and now speak to your palate. The third consideration is the most fascinating. An industrial product can be manufactured almost anywhere, but an agricultural product is tied to a specific region, to its people, to its history. This is the reason agricultural products are registered by denomination of origin or geographical indication, so that this special relationship is defined and protected. The first impression the visitor to Lesvos gets is of the island with the “bays of olive groves”, as Greek laureate Odysseas Elytis describes the vast olive groves that stretch from the hilltops down to the seaside.
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The Greek island of Lesvos (the ancient Lesvos), whose capital is the town of Mytilene, lies at the edge of Greece and Europe’ s geopolitical borders, a mere five nautical miles from the shores of Turkey. It is a border but also a portal between two countries, two continents and two civilisations. It has stood the test of time due to the age-long relationship of man and olive tree. The two are so inextricably intertwined that it is hard to say whether it is man who tamed the olive tree, or the tree that tempered man by bestowing upon him its valuable gifts. One might be able to find larger and lusher olive groves in many other places.
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But nowhere have people struggled so intently to cultivate the olive tree, and nowhere has the olive tree repaid this struggle so fully as in Lesvos, rewarding its inhabitants with the means for survival, independence from foreign rulers and one of the most important elements of their culture. When the Great Frost of 1850 destroyed all the olive groves on the island, the inhabitants did not give up hope on their tree. They imported and planted new, resilient varieties; they carried sacks of soil on their backs up the hill and mountainsides; stone by stone they built the terraces of land to protect the groves. Thus, they created better olive groves that were ten times bigger than the former ones. Then they constructed new oil mills and equipped them with expensive machinery imported from England. And so the “treasure” of oil they produced brought in money and allowed them to keep their island alive despite being under the yoke of Ottoman Rule.
This text is an extract from the booklet «The olive oil of Lesvos» of Vassilis Zambounis, that was published by the Hellenic Foreign Trade Board in collaboration with the Chamber of Lesvos.