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When he was growing up in the center of the Greek peninsula of Peloponnese, Vasilios Contis’ family grew olives to make oil for their own use like most of their neighbors.

“We used to harvest olives and take them to the press,” the Jericho resident recalled. “They used stone mills to crush everything and then when they pressed the oil, it was fresh and warm. There would be large round loaves of bread, about 20 inches in diameter, that they would cut into thick slices. We would toast them over the coals, and then put the bread in the fresh olive oil to soak and add oregano and salt. That was the treat we were looking forward to. That is what I remember, and I cherish it.”
Contis, 73, moved to the United States 54 years ago and retired from IBM in 1993. He was inspired to start his second career as a Greek olive oil importer because, he said simply, “I couldn’t find good olive oil in the market.”

Greek olive oil, Contis believes, is better “because of the soil” and also because it’s still largely made by small producers and not mechanically cultivated as it is in many other oil-producing countries. “There are 700,000 small producers in Greece,” he said, “and everything is still mostly done by hand.”
Seventy-five percent of Greek olive oil production actually goes to Italy where it is blended to be exported, much of it to the United States, Contis explained. “When you get Italian olive oil,” he said, “you don’t really know what you’re getting.”

It took Contis four years to find and establish relationships with high quality, reliable sources of olive oil back in the Peloponnese, which is both his home region and a major olive oil-producing area of Greece.

In 2001, Elaioladon-Contis Imports started bringing in three different types of extra-virgin, cold-pressed oil: Mistra Estates-Ladopoulos from a town near Sparta and both organic (Authentikon) and conventional (Kalliston) oils from Hermes-Dimarakis, another small producer on the Peloponnese coast.

Quality olive oil, Contis elaborated said, “should have good aroma. It smells like flowers because the pollinating bee carries other pollen when it comes. It should have low acidity so that when you taste it goes down smoothly, but it should have a light peppery taste and sweetness, too.”

“Essentially,” he clarified, “you are tasting fruit juice, but you have an oily fruit.”

Contact Melissa Pasanen at mpasanen@aol.com.

Vasilios N. Contis Elaioladon-Contis Imports, Inc 4 Arcadia Circle Jericho, VT 05465-2089 Phone: 802-899-2893 E-mail: vcontis@msn.com www.greekoliveoils.com

Vermonter Imports golden taste of his Greek heritage