The HouseSourcing
Slopes, not fields.
Everything Thymelia will sell starts on a named Greek hillside. The honey begins on the limestone slopes of the Lefka Ori — the White Mountains of western Crete — where wild thyme flowers from May to July and nothing is planted, irrigated or farmed. The olive oil we are sourcing begins across the water in the Koroneiki country above Kalamata, in the southern Peloponnese. This page explains how a harvest earns its place here, and it will name every producer we work with.
How a harvest is chosen
- Whole single-apiary harvests. We buy an apiary’s extraction outright — never pooled stock from a co-operative tank. One batch is one apiary, one extraction day, one certificate.
- Named producers. Every batch page names its apiary and plots its coordinates — the same ones printed on the jar. Producers are credited, not hidden behind a brand.
- Original photography only. Photographs on this site will come from our own visits to the apiaries — never stock imagery. Until we have them, you get honest drawings.
- Process limits in the contract. Cold extraction, no heating above hive temperature, no blending, no filtration beyond coarse straining — written into the purchase, then verified by the batch tests.
Where we stand today
We are selecting partner apiaries now — visiting producers in the Chania region, tasting, and asking for numbers: extraction temperatures, moisture, HMF and diastase per batch. The producers we sign will be named here at bottling, with the first batch records. We publish this page before the contracts precisely so you can compare what we promised with what we deliver.
The harvest year
One extraction a year means real scarcity: what the bloom gives is what exists. Jars are numbered per batch, and when a batch is gone its number retires. We are not publishing a date for the first jars — the Harvest Letter gets first call when there is one.
The country
A working chart, not a map. Batch pages plot real apiaries at real coordinates once the first contracts are signed.
The grove
Honey is the first origin; olive oil is the second. The oil we are sourcing comes from the hills above Kalamata, in the southern Peloponnese — the heartland of the Koroneiki, the small-fruited variety behind most of Greece's finest oil. The grove is contracted and its oil is certified organic; the mill and the Chania apiaries are still being walked, and no producer will be named here until a lot is bought.
A grove is chosen the way an apiary is, with different chemistry. The standard we hold it to, written into any purchase and proven on the lot papers:
- Early-harvest fruit. Olives picked green, early in the season, yield less oil with more character. We buy against the early-harvest standard, not against volume.
- Milled within hours, cold. Fruit into the mill within hours of picking, and extraction below 27 °C — the threshold that lets an oil call itself cold-extracted.
- Per-lot chemistry. Free acidity, peroxide value and the K-values (UV absorbency) for every lot — the same numbers a certificate of analysis carries, and the first things we read on any label.
- A phenolic figure per batch. Total polyphenols in mg/kg, measured per batch and published with it — the number behind an oil's bitterness and pepper. What the figure means is in the high-polyphenol guide.
What a PDO is
A PDO — Protected Designation of Origin — is a legal registration that ties a food's name to a defined place and method: the name may only be used for oil grown and made inside the designation, to its rules. Kalamata holds one for its olive oil, and it is recognised on the GB register of protected designations, so the name is protected in Great Britain too. That is education, not a claim: Thymelia holds no PDO and sells no oil yet. Whether a given lot carries the designation will be a fact of that lot's paperwork — stated when the paperwork is, and never before. More in the Kalamata guide.
The discipline is the one the honey side already runs: buy on the certificate, not on the story. An oil with no lot chemistry is an oil we do not buy — the same rule that keeps pooled-tank honey out. When the first contracts are signed, the producers, the mill and the numbers go here, next to the apiaries. Until then, the olive-oil guides hold everything we look for in an oil.
The oil country
The same working chart, not a map. Lot pages plot real groves at real coordinates once the first contracts are signed.