Maritsa in her grove at Kampia. Family archive.
Three generations, at the village church. Family archive.
Named for our grandmother, Maritsa.
Maritsa was our grandmother. She grew up in Kampia, in the shadow of the Machairas mountains, where the Kleanthous family has tended olive trees for generations. She is no longer with us, but these trees are.
Her connection to this land was not sentimental: it was practical, daily, and absolute. She understood what made an olive worth pressing. The colour of the fruit. The morning it was picked. The hours between grove and press.
She never left these hills, and she never stopped tending what grew in them. This oil carries her name because it carries what she knew.
Today, Sofroni tends the estate the way she would have demanded. He lives two kilometres from the grove and visits every day without being asked, including Sundays. Every bottle is pressed on the day the olives are picked. The same day. That was the standard then. It is the standard now.
