Pamako Olive Oil: High-Phenolic Excellence from Crete

Pamako was founded in 2014 by Eftihis Androulakis, an agricultural engineer from Chania, who took over his family’s centenarian olive groves in Selino in 2012. His family had farmed these same rocky, mountainous groves — at 500 to 700 meters altitude, largely without road access — for more than four generations before him. Rather than simply continuing as before, Eftihis spent two years researching a better way to mill, preserve, and bottle the oil, working alongside his partner Dorothea Ritter to bring the project to life.

One detail worth including on its own: the name “Pamako” comes from Linear B, the earliest known written script in Europe, developed by Minoan civilization — where the word translates to “medicine.” It’s a genuinely interesting historical detail about the name’s origin, not a claim about what the oil does; the actual, verifiable claim about the oil’s properties is the EU-certified polyphenol content described below.