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Makri extra vir­gin olive oil, from Greece, has received Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) sta­tus from the European Union.

The des­ig­na­tion for­mally rec­og­nizes olive oils pro­duced from the Elia Makris vari­ety, which is indige­nous to the north­east­ern Greek region, as being unique and pro­tects the name from being used by imi­ta­tion oils.

‘Elaiolado Makris’ (mean­ing ​‘olive oil from Makri’) was inserted in the E.U.‘s offi­cial PDO reg­is­ter on August 10, after the appli­ca­tion had been sub­mit­ted to the European Commission back in January 2018.

Since 1992, when the qual­ity schemes for European agri­cul­tural prod­ucts and food prod­ucts were intro­duced, a total of 20 Greek olive oils have received PDO sta­tus. It is the first olive oil and the first agri­cul­tural prod­uct over­all from the north­ern Greek ter­ri­tory of Thrace to receive PDO status. 

The Makri vari­ety is indige­nous to the area of the Makri vil­lage near Alexandroupolis, yield­ing an olive oil described as sweet, with fla­vors of fresh herbs, flow­ers and exotic fruits.

“After years of tar­geted efforts of the pre­fec­tural admin­is­tra­tion of Evros, Makri olive oil stands out at an inter­na­tional level,” Dimitris Petrovic, the deputy gov­er­nor of the Evros pre­fec­ture, said. ​“This acknowl­edge­ment gives added value to the excel­lent olive oil of our area.”

Paschalis Papadakis, the for­mer head of the local agri­cul­tural ser­vice and the man who coor­di­nated the cam­paign, told Athens News Agency that the process of gath­er­ing the data and evi­dence to sup­port the appli­ca­tion for the PDO label for Makri olive oil was lengthy and strenuous.

“It was­n’t only the required analy­ses from var­i­ous lab­o­ra­to­ries and the whole bureau­cracy, but we also had to come up with the trade­mark sign we filed to the Commission to be used on the pack­ag­ing,” Papadakis said.

“Our research even took us to the library of [Istanbul], where we spent many days look­ing for the rel­e­vant his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments,” he added. ​“We found the book in which the sul­tan’s sec­re­tary had writ­ten that they had dis­cov­ered mighty olive trees in Makri dur­ing a tour in 1600.”

According to Papadakis’ esti­mates, the whole Makri olive oil pro­duc­ing region con­sists of about 220,000 olive trees aged between 2,000 and 3,000 years, with an annual pro­duc­tion of 1,000 to 3,000 tons of olive oil, depend­ing on each sea­son’s yield.

Apart from the PDO qual­ity label, Makri olive oil also received a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) tag to sig­nify its place of origin.

• Official Journal of the European Union 
• Athens News Agency 
• Agro 24