The Olive Mill – Part 1: First Pressing

"Smell it first," said Nikos. "Then taste."

"It smells like grass."

"It smells like November." He grinned. "Now, a sip. Then you will cough a little. That is correct. That is the pepper."

Irene sipped the bright green oil from a small blue glass and coughed, delighted. It was fresh, peppery, grassy and golden-green. The mill, a stone building on a hillside above the sea, hummed with the sound of the presses. Crates of olives stood piled in the yard under a pale November sun. The air smelled of crushed leaves and warm earth.

Irene, thirty-four, was a chef from Athens, working on a new menu built around a single ingredient. Nikos, thirty-seven, was the miller, a big man with an easy laugh and stained hands who had pressed olives in this building since he was fifteen. He moved around the machinery as though it were a family of old friends.

"You can taste it all year," he said. "But the first day is the best. Everything is sharp and alive."

She stayed all afternoon, helping him load the olives into the grinder, watching the golden-green stream pour from the press. By dusk her sleeves were stained and she had learned five new words for the colour green.

"Stay for supper," said Nikos. "My mother's recipe. Bread, oil, cheese, wild greens. Nothing fancy."

"I'd love to. Is that all right?"

"It's the whole point." He smiled shyly, wiping his hands. "I make supper for the first-pressing day every year. It is always the same people. This year I would like it to be one new person."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Warm Bread.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Warm Bread.