All you ever needed to know about olive oil but were to afraid to ask can be found at a new museum outside Limassol


‘Except the vine, there’s no plant
which bears a fruit, of as great
importance as the olive.’
Pliny (AD-23-79)

DOUBTLESS many of the athletes competing for Gold at this year’s Olympic Games will at some stage make money through lucrative sponsorship deals. But the basic principle of the modern games remains that of amateurism: a far cry indeed from the first games held in Athens, when the winning athletes became rich overnight on their winnings.

Instead of awarding medals, the ancient games presented their top athletes with around five tons of olive oil. Strict laws had been enforced which prevented ordinary folk from trading in this precious liquid, but the winning athletes were given a special dispensation and a licence to become olive oil merchants, and in turn all became exceedingly rich from selling on their winning ‘liquid gold’.

The Roman Empire always equated olive oil production with peace, stability, and security. Conversely, one way to punish rebellious regions was to cut down and root out all the olive trees, turning the area into a barren wasteland.

An olive tree takes around four to 10 years to produce fruit, and another 20 years to become fully productive. Such was the value set on the olive groves that if any man was found to have cut down an olive tree on his land, he was immediately stoned to death.
If you have any reservation about the statement that ‘all foods are medicine and all medicines are food’ there can be no doubt that olives and olive oil fall into both categories – a fact that the Prophet Mohammed was aware off when he advised his followers to apply olive oil to their bodies on a daily basis in order to protect against infections, in particular leprosy and ringworm.

Today, we still turn to olive oil to sooth sunburn, we clean diamonds with it, rub it on wasp stings to prevent swelling and to kill the pain, while lumbago can be relieved by rubbing in a mixture of olive oil and cayenne pepper. Gall stones, earache, and gum disease were all treated with olive oil. Babies were cleansed with daily baths in the fruit of the olive as it was considered much safer than using soap and water, plus there was the recognised side effect of boosting the child’s digestive system through this daily washing ritual. One tablespoon of olive oil and honey mixed in a glass of hot water and taken twice a day results in a clear complexion, the disappearance of constipation, and is thought to be a preventative against colon cancer.
Swimmers have swum the English Channel covered in gallons of the stuff, cyclists rub it on their buttocks to prevent saddle sores and, from earliest times, the medicinal benefits of olive oil have been trumpeted when applied daily to a nasty outbreak of haemorrhoids.
You can light your home with olive oil, cook with it, eat it as a paste on bread, use the wood for furniture, drink its leaves when infused with hot water, bathe in it, moisturise, and even preserve fish in the oil.



IT is only right that in the foothills of the mountains between Limassol and Paphos there is now a place to pay homage to this unique fruit.

The House of the Olive is set high on a hill just outside the village of Anogyra, for which you turn off at the signpost from the motorway onto the Pachna road, about half way between Limassol and Paphos.

Lina Ellinas and her husband Andreas have sunk their life savings into creating this unique commercial olive-pressing unit, which also offers visitors the chance to learn more about the history of olive oil making, to purchase high grade extra virgin oil, or browse among the many olive-related products on sale in the gift shop, after which you can sit down in the tiny café area and watch (when in season) locals bringing in their just-picked olives to tip into one end of the pressing process.

These will then be turned into olive oil, a process which takes in total one and a half hours to complete. First, the olives are loaded onto a conveyor belt to the de-leafer, and then the fruit is washed and electronically weighed. Then it’s on to the crusher, where the marriage of high tech and old fashioned is seen with the use of old millstones. After the crushing process, the olives progress to the kneading machines, where the cold pressing system guarantees that the temperature does not exceed 25°.

The system used is entirely ecological as it uses two-phase centrifugal machines: these use no water during the extraction system, and so the olive oil not only retains its unique flavour, holds its colour and aroma, but there is no nasty liquid effluent in the form of waste water to dispose of.

The olive skins that are left at the end of the process are then mixed with prunings from the Oleastro groves to make organic compost for the trees, bringing a full circle to the oil making cycle.

Careful storing of the olive oil is vital and here the stainless steel tanks are kept at 15-18°: this holds the quality of the olive oil; in fact, everything associated with the process has been approved by the EU and the HACCP standards board, ensuring that this is one place in the world that you know you can completely trust the end product.

The oil produced is excellent stuff. Many people still complain that it’s an expensive product, with the (short-sighted) rationale being that with good old corn oil you can get five times the amount for half the price of olive oil. I bought a 250ml bottle of Oleastro Organic extra virgin olive oil for £3 and used it in the ultimate cooking test – frying eggs. It was excellent: this oil can take a decomposition level when frying that is 10 times higher than corn oil and without changing the subtle flavour of the oil.

The Ellinas family live next door to their creation and are proud of their contribution to the village, as their House of the Olive has brought much needed passing trade through the lovely old village of Anogyra, which has plenty else to offer the discerning tourist, with the excellent Domaine Nicolaides winery, which produces the best glass of Rosé (Aphrodino) on the island. On the outskirts of the village sits the abandoned Byzantine Holy Cross monastery, currently undergoing a complete renovation, then there are the old stone houses, cobbled streets, the stone-built water spring that brings the cool mountain water down from Troodos; there is even an ancient olive sellers’ cave, along with a couple of tavernas where you can sit and have a pleasant lunch and pride yourself on your new found olive knowledge.

So the next time someone questions the difference between virgin and extra virgin oil, instead of agreeing this sounds as contradictory as a woman being ‘a little bit pregnant’, you can swoop right on in there and give them the full benefit of your knowledge gleaned while visiting the House of the Olive.

n The House of Olive. Open seven days a week from 10am until 7pm. Drive through Anogrya village following the signposts directing you to the House of Oleastro. Tel 99-525093, 99-565768, 25-991130