South of the Olive Line
The olive and its oil are sacred to the Peloponnesians. A relatively recent drive to go organic has now had a side-effect: it has started a revolution in agrotourism. As the olive harvest begins, we take a tour

PETER TEROSINO
IN LACONIA

AGROTOURISM is one of those inelegant terms that bureaucrats love to coin but seem to do little else with. Until, that is, the olive growers of the Southern Peloponnese decided to show a few foreign journalists how concrete the concept can be - and we, without exception, came away refreshed and stimulated.
One thing about agrotourism is that you can expect the unexpected. Take, for example, Fritz Bläuel, a most unlikely man in the most unlikely place. He's a flowing-haired Austrian who owns and operates one of Greece's very few organic olive oil presses. High in the western foothills of Mount Taygetos, the massif that separates Sparta from the Messenian Mani, Bläuel's oil press operates in conditions of strictest hygiene, which has endeared him and his family to the locals who admittedly, in the light of experiences in the Second World War, had little use for Germans of any kind.
The visitor to Bläuel's well-kept olive oil factory near the village of Pyrgos Lefktrou is greeted by a banner proclaiming in German that the product of this establishment is "the most important oil change you'll ever have." The reason is medicinal rather than automotive.
Olive oil, in its best form, has plenty of what biochemists call antioxidants. These are what enter the bloodstream to fight so-called free radicals, or rogue molecules that are believed at least partly responsible for the degeneration human tissue, ageing, and the dire consequences such as heart attacks and strokes.
Drink at least 66 grams of pure olive oil a day and you've got the best heart protection," vows Paraskevas Tokuzbalides, an American-trained biochemist and adviser to the olive oil industry. "It's why the Greeks are generally long-lived even though they stick to unhealthy habits such as smoking. If a way could be found to completely eliminate free radicals from our bodies, we could live as long as a thousand years."
If that wasn't incentive enough to sigh up for the four-day Olive Line tour hosted by Peloponnesian olive growers' associations, then what was? Our first stop was Monemvasia, the great Gibraltar-like rock connected to the mainland by a short bridge and boasting one of the world's best-kept mediaeval walled towns with smart accommodation and enough tony cafes to more than rival Portofino.
The villages around the adjacent port town gave us a first taste - literally - of the district's nourishment. About ten kilometres north of Monemvasia, on the narrow Sparta road, a rough sign points the way over a steep shoulder to Aghios Ioannis. This is the site of the O-Athas tavern, where the cream of local cuisine can be sampled. Flat, pancake-like pies laced with cheese and spinach form a first course, supplemented by gogylia, or slug-shaped lumps of pasta, climaxed by tender roast goat that really does melt in the mouth and put a five-star Michelin restaurant to shame.
There were olives, of course, of all shapes, colours, sizes and textures. The local elliptical variety are kept in a vinegary but largely salt-free solution, while the home-brewed red wine slides down the throat in fruity rich satisfaction without one's having to worry about a hangover.
As the local growers were more than happy to enlighten a bunch of jaded city scribblers, they treated us to a sumptuous evening feast at the Melidzanadika (translated roughly as Aubergine Place) in the village of Aghios Stephanos, a few miles south of Monemvasia. As the place name indicates, its speciality is baked and stuffed aubergines, plus plenty more of those thin cakes (which are incredibly light on the stomach). But what was most pleasing to us was the joy and pride on the weather-beaten faces of the olive growers serving us their wares in elegant glass sauceboats, not to mention the more self-satisfied expressions on the somewhat plumper faces of the elected Lakonian officials, their flickering eyes in constant search of that extra vote.
Laconic - the word still well-describes the social manner of the Lakonians, a hardy tribe which includes the Spartans, laced with some Cretan stock through royalist Cretan families banished from the island in the 1920s when Greece became temporarily a republic. The Lakonians and the olive are one - hardy, uncomplaining and productive, just as the olive is the staple of the Greeks' diet and the Lakonian spirit is the hard core of the Greek character.
Take, for example, the village of Geraki, seen from the distance as a Byzantine crust on the lower slopes of Mount Parnon. Besides its mediaeval buildings and domes in grey-brown masonry, Geraki - the old Spartan deme of Geronthrae and home to a Byzantine-era castle - offers a first-hand look at the olive economy. Nearby is Kefala, which hosts an organic olive press. On a rise near the village lies an extensive grove of gnarled olive trees surrounding a stark concrete cube of the kind seen too often in and around the Athens factory districts.

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