The olive harvest, step by step

Every year, between November and January, the Koroneiki olive harvest marks the start of the cycle that will become Ellada oil. On the family estate in Messenia, in the south-west Peloponnese, this moment has been awaited with the same care for several generations.

Timing the harvest

Olives aren't picked all at once, or at the same stage of ripeness. For an extra virgin oil with a fruity taste and low acidity like Ellada's (between 0.2 and 0.3 g/L), the olives are picked relatively early in their ripening, just as their skin starts to change colour. A later harvest would give a milder oil, but one lower in polyphenols and more prone to oxidation.

Picked by hand

On the windswept, limestone-rich slopes of the estate, the olives are hand-picked, tree by tree. This method, slower than mechanical shaking, avoids bruising the fruit and allows the ripest olives to be sorted as they're picked. It takes more time and labour, but it's what preserves the quality of the olives all the way to the mill.

From tree to mill, as fast as possible

Once picked, the olives are taken to the mill without delay. This short window matters: the longer olives wait before being pressed, the more they oxidise and lose aromatic quality. They are then washed, stripped of leaves, crushed, cold-malaxated and centrifuged — five steps detailed on our Production page.

A production that stays artisan

Each year, the estate produces between 8,000 and 12,000 litres of extra virgin olive oil — a deliberately modest, human-scale output that allows for rigorous quality control at every step. It's this standard, year after year, that we try to bring all the way to your kitchen.