March 31, 2026
Dear Friends,
THE FRESH OIL IS ON ITS WAY!
The fresh olive oil is expected to arrive in late April.
Pre-orders will be in two phases this year:
Phase I [TINS]: 5L tin olive oil orders in April, with pickup & shipping in May
Phase II [BOTTLES]: Bottle orders of oil, balsamic vinegar and other products in June
Initially at least, pre-orders will be via email selections and e-Transfer payments only. They cannot be placed through our online store.
A MOST CHALLENGING HARVEST
The 2025-26 harvest was perhaps the most challenging of the past half century, both in terms of quantity and quality.
This was mostly due to unrelenting rains and conditions in many growing areas that caused olives to oxidize at alarming rates, especially as the harvest progressed.
We are so so grateful for the longstanding and varied grower and supplier relationships formed over the past 25 years where all are committed to early harvests and premium quality.
Gratitude is also due to the numerous micro-climates of the mountainous Peloponnisos region of southern Greece which by grace allow solitary pockets of unaffected groves while disaster reigns all around.
In a year where unheard-of levels of high acidity were prevalent in many regions and areas within regions, we were able to source superb low-acidity oils that compare favourably with oils from even the best harvests of the past.
All three fresh oils are familiar to us.
While two of the three (ARGOLID, KALAMATA) retained their historical character one of them (KORONI) surprised us by flipping from "strong" to "mild"!
We are especially thrilled about the return of our Kalamata grower's oil after a two-year absence.
THE 2026 OILS
The 2026 oils cover the flavour profile spectrum - mild, medium and strong in intensity:
MILD: KORONI - mellow buttery, grassy/leafy tones, restrained pepperiness
MEDIUM: ARGOLID - starts
STRONG: KALAMATA - intense, grassy, leafy, olive-y structure, robust pepperiness
PRE-ORDER STARTING TODAY!
You can place your pre-orders starting today and until April 30th before midnight.
As stated, pre-orders during this Phase I are limited to 5L tins.
Timing for pick-up and shipping of pre-orders in May will be sent once the oil is in hand.
2026 PRE-ORDER PRICES
The chart below shows pricing for both pickup orders and those to be shipped:
LIMITED NUMBER OF LAST YEAR'S 5 L ARGOLID TINS
We also have a very small quantity of 5L tins of last year's Argolid oil at $160 each.
If ordering tins of both fresh and last year's oils please use the price/tin for the fresh oils shown above and use the total number of tins to figure out the shipping cost.
For example: 2 fresh tins + 1 last year's tin= 3 Tins total
= $350 + $160 = $510 pickup
OR + $50 shipping for 3 tins
= $560 Total including shipping
PHASE I PRE-ORDERS: 5 L TINS EMAIL SELECTIONS & e-TRANSFERS
As stated above, this year's pre-orders will be processed entirely via email and e-Transfer payments.
Please email us at info@ralooliveoil.com with your selections and send payment via e-Transfer to that same email address. Feel free to confirm your calculations with us if in any doubt.
If you prefer payment via personal cheque please make cheques payable to "ralo inc" and mail to ralo inc, 100 John St West, Waterloo ON N2L 1C1.
PHASE II PRE-ORDERS: BOTTLE FORMATS COMING IN JUNE
In June you will be able to place orders for 500ml sizes of olive oils and balsamic vinegars in 500ml and 200ml bottles.
A separate newsletter will go out in late May for bottle orders which will be available in June.
A PICTURE IS WORTH HOW MANY WORDS?
Those of you interested only in placing your pre-orders can stop reading now.
If you decide to scroll down without reading it really is ok to say you subscribe to ralo newsletters just for the photos.
As for the rest who enjoy the backstory, get comfortable as this will be a longer read.
FALL 2025 HARVEST: ...HERE COMES THE RAIN AGAIN...AND AGAIN...
Southern Greece in October is usually dry with little or no rain.
Yes, there might be a brief drizzle or shower for a few hours but the clouds clear, the sun shines through and all is dry in no time. Many Octobers have come and gone without a single drop of rain.
Not so October 2025.
The rain started immediately, rather than in mid-November when it usually arrives.
At first It was welcome after a long, dry, scorching summer.
The parched olive trees were thirsty, having reserved moisture in the roots and trunk for survival. This meant the olive fruit was smaller and slightly wrinkled from having too little water.
The strain on the trees was evident as leaves had taken on a distinctly yellowish hue.
For the first ten days of rain the trees quenched their thirst. Then they began sending water to the olive fruit which before long became plump, smooth and shiny.
Grower sighs of relief rippled through the groves.
But the rain continued.
It rained and kept on raining.
It did not let up.
After the third week the potential risk of losing some or all of the harvest started to creep onto the radar screen.
Wet olives and leaves can lead to proliferation of mould, pests and other diseases affecting the quality of the fruit and thus the oil produced from them.
Fields cannot be reached or entered as tractors and other vehicles literally get bogged down in the muck. The trees are also more easily injured if wet and more branches break off no matter how much care one brings to bear.
Workers get soaked from head to foot merely from the myriad of drops dislodged from branches and leaves.
Pruning becomes more of a challenge, especially if one has to climb up into slippery trees. Moving water-logged harvesting nets becomes a slow, tedious process.
Those determined to get their harvest in early had everything and everyone on standby ready to move into action whenever opportunity allowed.
It's a good thing they did so because the rains continued throughout November and December.
Nothing good came from waiting.
SILVER LININGS
The variability in the weather over very short distances in mountainous terrain close to the sea is nothing short of remarkable.
It might be pouring in an entire valley or over an entire mountain but, in the next valley or in the lee of the clouds, other areas are rain-free.
Respite from the rain changed from one day and place to the next or over periods of several days. One could not predict where or when there would be an opening nor how long it would last.
Though it was a frustrating stop-and-go process those who were well-organized, diligent and persistent managed to accomplish what they set out to do.
Such "lucky" ones finished their harvests anywhere from early to late November. They were rewarded with excellent quality oil and low acidity, and were spared the fretting.
Those that waited were not so lucky.
When they finally got into their fields they found fruit devastated by pests, mould, other diseases and water damage.
Olive presses reported unprecedented acidity levels that were off the charts.
Many growers threw up their hands and wrote off the entire harvest.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
The situation in Italy and Spain was similar to that in Greece.
Pre-harvest projections of a bumper harvest and price easing gave way to disappointment and revised figures after the climate, pests and disease wreaked havoc on what had been a promising harvest.
Prices would be higher, not lower, if you could even find good oil.
ANNUAL RETURN OF THE NATIVES
All over mainland Greece and the islands, those who have moved away from their villages but have still retained and maintained the family olive groves return each Fall for the harvest.
Each person has their own philosophy about when they prefer to harvest but also varying degrees of flexibility in their employment or business obligations.
They don't all return at once. Often the only way to know that someone is in the village is if smoke is rising from their house chimney.
They trickle in to pick their olives and, once finished and with freshly-pressed oil in hand, they trickle out and back to Athens or wherever they now live.
Our family's two small groves lie on the banks of the Neda River at the northern edge of Messinia prefecture, near the borders with Arcadia and Elis (aka Ilia).
THE NEDA RIVER GORGE
The Neda River Gorge is a mythical place, the birthplace (Zeus) and grieving place (Demeter) of gods.
North of the Neda, at a place called Bassae stands the Temple of Epicurius Apollo ("The Healer/Helper", not a divine gourmet-philospher).
Pausanias, a second century C.E. traveler, reports that on the nearby adjacent peak were ruins at that time of even earlier temples dedicated to the female divinities Artemis and Aphrodite.
At the confluence of the Neda and Lymax rivers was the site of another lost temple sanctuary dedicated to Eurynome, a mermaid Titan goddess whose divine reign predated the better-known Olympian pantheon that overthrew her regime.
This remote and mostly inaccessible gorge is where the unsubdued have sought and found refuge from persecutors, tax collectors and would-be father-in-laws since the Roman era and up through the dark Ottoman centuries.
In recent times it serves as refuge from a modernity no longer recognizable at the human scale.
Before all that, Homer makes mention of warriors at Troy from nearby Phigaleia, with the area estimated to have been home to a couple of hundred thousand people in Homeric times.
Necessity does not always allow modern era minds to turn to the historical, prehistorical and mythical dimensions of the ground beneath their feet.
For us, first and foremost, it is home.
Clusters of self- and stone-built houses have dotted the mountainsides on either side of the Neda gorge for millenia, peopled by insular, close-knit, tribally-organized clans.
These enduring and resilient spirits shared a brutally harsh existence of endless toil on lands more rock than soil, ever and always one bad harvest or calamity away from starvation.
A fiercely independent, self-sufficient, "free" people.
Impoverished in material goods but resourceful and enormously rich in social co-operation, interdependence and cultural tradition.
In such villages almost everyone is related, often on both sides. (The joke is that if we had more sides to us we'd likely be related on all of them).
Everyone knew everyone, for generations.
One's default reputation came from the clan born into.
This explains why the first question asked of those not recognized is "Whose (child) are you?"
HARVESTING THE FAMILY GROVES
Having watched the fruit ripening cycles and the rain patterns over the past two decades Robert initiated the family into the "late October/early November" harvesting movement.
The Fall of 2025 found three of us five brothers in the village committed to harvesting together.
By a remarkable feat of luck we managed to time our harvest exactly within a 2.5 day lull in the early November rains.
On this side of the rainbow the olive fruit was in excellent condition with no damage from pests or diseases.
Despite the expected differences of opinion (on just about everything amongst three siblings) we managed to have the olives pressed within hours of finishing the harvest.
We were rewarded with a vibrant, delicious olive oil with an acidity level below 0.3!
REPLACING WHAT ICE DESTROYED
One of the two family groves on the north bank of the Neda at one time had roughly 90 olive trees planted by our parents and grandparents more than seven decades ago.
In the 1990's an ice storm destroyed about two-thirds of the trees. As resilient as olive trees can be, only a handful of the trees recovered.
After having the dead stumps removed and the grove cleared of stones and graded, there was a barren emptiness where once there was shade.
Newly-planted trees need to be watered during the dry months from May to October for the first couple of years. This is so the roots can set and the tree can adapt itself to its new environment in order to have some chance of survival.
Not having someone reliable to do the watering had thus far stopped us from planting new trees.
This year an older brother's passion and insistence was the tipping point to action.
We measured off the chosen spacing from existing trees and drove freshly-cut bamboo stakes into the ground to mark the planting rows (and so we could figure out for how many trees we had room).
After numerous counts and recounts (necessary despite no hanging chads) we settled on a number: Sixty trees.
In a fenced lot in a town on the plain beside an abandoned house set back from the main road towards Kalamata we purchased sturdy four- to five-year-old saplings from an "old-timer" who operated a makeshift nursery.
Each sapling had been created in the manner learned from his elders: from cuttings taken from mature trees and nurtured for several years. No artificially-propagated offerings in sight.
A local man with an excavator was engaged, first to negotiate with the wily "old-timer", and then to transport the trees and to dig and refill the holes for planting.
After several rain delays we dared make a go of it despite a light drizzle, knowing if the skies opened all would be futile.
So, serpentine-we-go up one side of the mountain, serpentine-we-go down the other side, down into the Neda River gorge.
Gods unknown and long-ignored favoured us.
The drizzle lacked ambition long enough to enable the planting of all 60 trees in one day.
Exhilaration. Satisfaction. Pride.
Sixty patches of shade replenished.
Tradition honoured.
Balance restored.
Then, the heavens opened, and it poured.
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE GREEK MOUNTAIN VILLAGE
Robert was seven when the family immigrated to Canada.
Returning to the village annually for the past twenty-five years he has been struck by the steadily-falling number of full-time residents and the advancing age of those that remain.
It will not be too long before the number falls into single digits.
The inescapable feeling one gets with each return to the village is that of visiting an elderly loved one in failing health to keep them company until with their last breath they repay the first one borrowed.
How did things get this way?
The toll of WWII followed by a horrific civil war devastated Greece, the economy and the social fabric.
Until then over two-thirds of Greece's population lived in rural villages, many of them remote and at high mountain altitudes like ours which is situated at 850m above sea level.
In the 1950's/early 1960's it had a population of about five hundred people. The village elementary school had 120 children and two teachers.
By the 1980's the villages throughout Greece had emptied into towns and cities on the plains, but mostly into its bloated capital city, Athens. Enormous numbers immigrated to Germany, America, Canada and Australia.
...
Flash forward almost 60 years.
...
Now, with paved roads leading into and out of the village in three directions, electricity, running water, indoor toilets, cell phones and even WiFi, there are under twenty year-round residents.
There are no more weddings, births or baptisms. Only funerals and memorials.
In the summer there is the great annual migration back - from Athens, Thessaloniki, Germany, Canada, USA and Australia - usually bracketing the village celebration of its patron saint in the third week of July. Lots of food, wine, music, dancing, good cheer, and of course more dancing.
Many spend their summer vacations in the village with their children, using their village homes, if maintained, like a cottage. The number can swell to a couple hundred.
Otherwise, the village is quiet, still and mostly empty.
Smoke rises from few chimneys in cooler months. The cold hearths have been so for decades.
Paradoxically, the rest of the year it is only when someone dies that the village suddenly and fleetingly springs to full life.
Hundreds drive down from Athens the morning of the funeral to pay their respects, often having to introduce themselves to first cousins they have heard of but never met.
The church candle coffers fill as memorial candles are lit and embedded in sand with prayers for remembered loved ones whispered so as not to disturb the sombre chanting of the Orthodox funeral ritual.
Then the slow trek downhill to the cemetery sentineled by tall cypress trees where the casket is slid into an above-ground marble family vault and sealed.
Then a slower climb back uphill for the gathering at the elementary-school-turned-into village kafeneio for coffee and a meal hosted by the bereaved family.
After the meal is over begin more and more glances at cell phones or watches, apologetic sighs and reluctant "I better be getting back. I work tonight/tomorrow. Eternal may his memory be ...".
Emptiness and stillness once again.
...
Flashback almost 60 years
...
When our family left the village in late 1968 an already-too-familiar scene again played out in the village square.
Everyone remaining gathered to say goodbye to those departing.
In a time of no electricity, running water, toilets, telephones or even cars, when someone left the village the goodbye might be forever.
Austere faces, meant but sob-choked words of blessing, desperate hugs.
Tied down and facing backwards on the saddle of one of a team of mules making its way eastwards on the small footpath out of the village a bewildered seven-year-old boy, through blurry eyes, watched as two same-age first-cousins ran behind, their little legs tripping over thorns and stones, falling and picking themselves up again, paying no heed to the tearing of their soaked clothes, repeatedly pleading:
"Come back little cousin! Come back! Don't go! Please don't go"
