The Papadopoulos family has been pressing olive oil in the same stone mill since 1923. We spent a morning with them to understand what that continuity actually means.
The olive press at the edge of the village has been in the Papadopoulos family since 1923. It is not the most efficient press in Halkidiki. It is not the fastest. But Nikos Papadopoulos, who is 67 and has been running it since he was nineteen, is not interested in efficiency.
"The stone takes time," he says, when we ask why he has not switched to a centrifuge press like most producers in the area. "The stone knows the olive." He says this without irony.
His grandfather built the press from local granite. His father repaired it twice — once after a flood in 1952, once after a fire in 1978. Nikos has repaired it four times. His son, Petros, who is 34 and studied agriculture in Thessaloniki, is learning to do the same.
What the stone press produces is not the standardised extra virgin oil you find on supermarket shelves. It is variable — different from year to year, different depending on when the olives were picked, different depending on the weather. This year's oil is sharper, with a distinct pepper finish. Last year's was rounder, milder. Nikos could tell you why, but the explanation would take most of the morning.
We tasted both oils with stale bread, the way Nikos prefers. The bread does not interfere, he explains. It just carries.
The Papadopoulos family sells most of their production directly to families they have known for decades, in five-litre tins that Petros labels by hand. They do not have a website. They do not ship internationally. If you want their oil, you have to come to Halkidiki and ask for it yourself — which seems, the more we think about it, exactly as it should be.