Author: Györgyi Kalas
Photos: Barbara Mihályi
Published: 3 November 2021 by Street Kitchen
Juli Laki is one of the owners of Honest Toil, though originally she had nothing to do with either farming or olives. She studied humanities and worked in a gallery. Her partner, Tom, is English, and one day his parents simply upped sticks and moved to Greece. Like the Durrells, they had had enough of the English weather, so they sold their house and bought a smallholding in the Peloponnese. Juli and Tom fell more and more in love with the landscape and its tiny, authentic villages. They visited his parents increasingly often, until eventually they too bought a little house and began renovating it.
The best thing we had ever tasted
“Our plot had more than 200 olive trees, and we immediately began wondering what we might do with them. We took the olives to a local press, had them pressed, and discovered that the oil tasted better than anything we had ever tried. That was when the idea came to us that this was what we wanted to do. We pressed our first oil ten years ago and began by selling it in Berlin, where we found enormous demand for good-quality oil. We have been selling it here in Hungary for a few years now, too; in fact, our product is stocked in every refill shop,” Juli says, recounting how Honest Toil came into being.
The olive harvest begins in Greece.
The olives go straight to the press after harvest
Juli and Tom use only Koroneiki olives for their oil. There are, after all, many varieties of olive, just as there are many varieties of apple in Hungary, and each tastes different. Koroneiki is a distinctive Greek variety with a wonderfully fresh aroma reminiscent of cut grass. The important thing is to harvest the fruit as early as possible, when its flavour is fullest, and to press it within 48 hours of picking so that it retains that fresh aroma. Large-scale producers, for example, often use overripe fruit because it yields more oil, though the aroma is nowhere near as intense.
The harvested olives.
Honest Toil: the whole family harvests together
Unlike large producers, Juli and Tom do not blend olive varieties: their oil is guaranteed to contain just one. A small grower can promise that their product is traceable down to the very last olive, while an industrial producer will not give you that guarantee. Juli knows exactly — village by village — where her oil came from each year, which grower produced it, and whether that grower farms sustainably.
Oil flowing from the press. Photo: Juli Laki
Olives ripen from late October until January, which is harvest season. Juli and Tom spend the whole of this period in Greece with their young son, as they harvest their own trees themselves. Naturally, those trees would not produce enough to supply all their customers — they now deliver to restaurants as well — so they buy additional oil from family growers and presses. They do not yet have a press of their own, but that is not the aim for now: local Greek families have operated these presses for generations. Almost every press here is family-owned.
Extra virgin olive oil is cold-pressed
To picture how the olives are pressed, all the fruit, along with a few leaves and twigs, goes into the press together, and the oil is extracted cold from the lot. Ever since nutrition experts began emphasising olive oil’s beneficial effects — saying it helps prevent cardiovascular disease, diabetes and osteoporosis — demand for it has grown enormously. But, and here is the catch, all of that applies only to extra virgin olive oil.
The point of extra virgin oil is that the olives are pressed within two days of picking, at no more than 27°C, and the oil is immediately stored correctly. Cold pressing also matters because it carries the valuable vitamins and minerals in the fruit into the oil. Pressing the fruit with heat produces far more oil, but its aroma and nutritional value will be nowhere near as high.
Juli and Tom are always present for the pressing and choose for themselves which oil is of a high enough quality to go into an Honest Toil bottle. Freshly pressed oil is intensely green, the colour of grass, and because it is unfiltered, it is opaque as well. This colour is a sign of freshness. As the oil rests, it gradually yellows and takes on its characteristic golden colour. The pressed oil then still has to be bottled and transported, so, as you can see, an enormous amount of work goes into a bottle of good-quality olive oil.
The olives are knocked from the trees by hand.
Sustainability matters enormously
Sustainability is extremely important to Juli and Tom, which is why they took on the challenge of supplying oil to refill shops as well. The large metal containers and glass bottles can be refilled, so they produce virtually no waste. Transport cannot be avoided altogether, of course, and inevitably has some environmental impact. What they can do is deliver to shops and restaurants within Budapest exclusively by bicycle rather than by car. The same is true not only in Budapest, but also in London and Berlin, where Honest Toil oil is delivered as well.
You can buy the oil packaging-free and refill the tin. Photo: Juli Laki
I managed to speak to Juli at the very last moment, as they were about to set off for Greece again for the beginning of the harvest. This year their young son will be going to a Greek nursery while they pick the olives and stand beside the press.
You can buy Honest Toil oil packaging-free from every Ligeti Bolt shop — we wrote more about them here — and from other refill shops. It is also available in swing-top bottles from many farm shops. Stockists include Szatyorbolt, Deli Land, the bakery A kis pékinas, A másik bolt and Culinaris, as well as several smaller delicatessens outside Budapest.
