The Hindu Business Line : The old world charm still lingers...

In the quaint little village of Stayropigio Mani, in the Peleponesse olive belt of Greece, about an hour's drive from Githio — where Paris and "beautiful Helen" are said to have spent their first night after escaping from the palace of King Menolaus and before setting sail for Troy from the Githio port — is located a traditional stone-mill olive press that is 150 years old.

In this region of Greece, you see homes that are 200 years old and churches belonging to the 11th century. You just have to scratch a wall and it will speak of history that is centuries old! According to the owner of this mill, Giorgios Skarpalezos, a bit of a legend himself for his adherence to the traditional and ancient methods of producing olive oil, this is the only mill in the whole area that has continued to resist the temptations of modernisation and fully automated machinery. The village with its narrow streets and stone houses is charming and quiet — after all it is home to hardly a few hundred people.

The aroma of pure, virgin olive oil greets the group of journalists on a media tour of the olive growing regions of Greece, organised by the International Olive Oil Council, a UN entity. This is the harvesting season in Greece and sacks of olives are stacked all over the place.

Olive picking is a sacred and serious activity here, and Greece must be the only country in the world where civil servants get paid leave to attend to picking olives in their family groves. The contrast between this tiny mill that produces just 150 tonnes of olive oil a year and the modern plant we had visited earlier in the morning, which produces 1,000 tonnes of oil and 100 tonnes of table oils a year, is striking.

The latter has a fully automated processing and packing plant. But Skarpalezos will not have it any other way. It is with great passion and earnestness that he explains to us the entire production procedure... from the crushing of the olives by two huge circular stones, to the pressing of the paste in jute-like bags, the mixing of the oil with water and then the separation, before it is bottled and sold under the brand name Mariatisa.

This extra virgin olive oil is unfiltered and viewing the packaged products on display, a Canadian journalist in our group remarks: "You'll never be able to get this kind of olive oil in Canada; nobody will buy it, because they think they'll die if they consume it!"

But Skarpalezos has no marketing problems for the product for which he depends mainly on word of mouth. "Once a consumer buys my oil, he'll be a customer for life," says the genial old man.

Lunch is hosted at the mill by the Chamber of Messinia, the prefecture (district) to which the village belongs. The breads are light and airy, the olive oil fresh from the mill, the avocado paste with a dash of garlic delicious and the vegetables — potatoes, carrots, spring onions, broccoli, and so on — as fresh as they can be. All of them are generously doused in olive oil.

After a succession of huge lunches and dinners, which are a hallmark of Greek hospitality, it is a relief to turn a vegetarian, if only for a single meal. All the meat dishes are of pork, and my colleagues react with long "mmmmmms" on tasting the pork sausages made with huge chunks of fresh orange rind; an unusual combination.

Messinia produces 10 per cent of Greece's total olive oil; the mill's premises is akin to a small museum by itself, with ancient implements used in olive oil production proudly displayed. In our honour, Skarpalezos has lighted up a traditional oil lamp used when there was no electricity. The fuel used to light the lamp? Olive oil, of course.

(To be continued)