Bringing Peloponnesian Flavors to American Kitchens

Summary

Katerina Mountanos, a Greek-American, was dis­ap­pointed with the taste of Greek olive oils sold in American super­mar­kets, prompt­ing her to start her own brand, Kosterina, using high-qual­ity olives from south­ern Peloponnese. Mountanos’ com­mit­ment to qual­ity has led to the pro­duc­tion of high-phe­no­lic extra vir­gin olive oils and nat­u­rally-cured table olives, focus­ing on health ben­e­fits and authen­tic Mediterranean fla­vors.

When Greek-American Katerina Mountanos set­tled in the United States and started a fam­ily, she was dis­ap­pointed with the taste of most of the Greek olive oils sold in American super­mar­kets.

“As I started my own fam­ily, I began cook­ing more at home,” Mountanos told Olive Oil Times. ​“I found that the Greek extra vir­gin olive oil at the super­mar­ket here tasted noth­ing like what my fam­ily pro­duced and enjoyed in Greece.”

Despite grow­ing up mainly in London and New York, Mountanos spent her child­hood sum­mers at that family’s home in the small pic­turesque town of Koroni in south­ern Peloponnese.

“This idyl­lic vil­lage has always rep­re­sented true Greece,” she said. ​“I’m not sure if I can cap­ture in words the sound of the sea, the smell of salt, and the taste of olive oil.”

Koroni is con­sid­ered to be the ori­gin of the Koroneiki olive vari­ety. In the 19^th cen­tury, the town devel­oped rapidly, and the local econ­omy grew based on olive oil, raisin and pot­tery pro­duc­tion.

“I grew up know­ing what good olive oil tastes like,” Mountanos said. ​”I knew I wanted to bring the good stuff to the U.S.”

Before ven­tur­ing into the world of olive oil pro­duc­tion, Mountanos also took an olive oil som­me­lier course to dig deeper into the mer­its and qual­i­ties of extra vir­gin olive oil.

“I was blown away by the health ben­e­fits of olive oil when [the olives are] har­vested early and milled prop­erly,” she said. ​“I learned about the polyphe­nols found in extra vir­gin olive oil and the story of the research team that dis­cov­ered them.”

“I decided to focus my efforts on mak­ing an extra vir­gin olive oil that is authen­ti­cally Mediterranean, deli­cious to smell, taste, and cook with, and, above all, loaded with health ben­e­fits,” Mountanos added.

Olive oil polyphe­nols, such as oleu­ropein, hydrox­y­ty­rosol and oleo­can­thal, are nat­u­rally occur­ring plant com­pounds act­ing as antiox­i­dants.

Oleocanthal, in par­tic­u­lar, found solely in extra vir­gin olive oil, has been shown to have the same effects on the human body as ibupro­fen, an anti-inflam­ma­tory drug that relieves pain, fever and inflam­ma­tion.

Kosterina, the com­pany founded by Mountanos (also known as Katina) and her hus­band Kostas, launched its first brand of bot­tled olive oil in 2020. The high-phe­no­lic Kosterina Original extra vir­gin olive oil is made from early-har­vested Koroneiki olives grown in south­ern Peloponnese.

Since then, Kosterina has expanded its line of olive oils to include the Kosterina Everyday olive oil, an organic extra vir­gin olive oil best suited for cook­ing and bak­ing, and the line of fla­vored extra vir­gin olive oils with Greek herbs and gar­lic.

“Premium, high-polyphe­nol extra vir­gin olive oil has always been at the core of our brand,” Mountanos said. ​“We want to help peo­ple live longer, more deli­cious lives.”

“Taste is an indi­ca­tor of qual­ity, and too many Americans are not only miss­ing out on irre­sistible extra vir­gin olive oil fla­vor but also the antiox­i­dant super­pow­ers derived from olives har­vested early,” she added.

Commitment to qual­ity and authen­tic­ity has paid off for Kosterina, earn­ing the com­pany a Silver Award at this year’s NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition for the Kosterina Original mono­va­ri­etal, its first par­tic­i­pa­tion in the com­pe­ti­tion.

Unsurprisingly, Mountanos’ Greek ances­try and pas­sion for authen­tic Greek fla­vors have also brought her into the table olive busi­ness; a recent addi­tion to Kosterina’s Mediterranean range of prod­ucts is the company’s nat­u­rally-cured Kalamata and green Konservolia table olives.

Once again, Mountanos trav­eled back to her child­hood to find the tools she believed would
bet­ter suit Kosterina’s new project.

“When I was young and spent my sum­mers in Koroni, my grand­mother and other locals would tie a bag of olives from the house and let them cure in the sea for months,” Mountanos said.

“Almost all the olives I was see­ing here in the U.S. were fla­vor­less black olives that have most likely been cured in lye, which strips all the healthy nutri­ents from the olive,” she added. ​“So, when we found our pro­ducer in Greece who cured their olives nat­u­rally in sea salt, we knew we had found the right pro­ducer to bring high-qual­ity Greek olives to the United States.”

According to one source, the first olives cured in salt water were acci­den­tally dis­cov­ered afloat some­where in the Greek seas in ancient times: in his epic poem Aeneid of the 1^st cen­tury BC, Roman poet Virgil tells the story of a Greek fish­er­man who found olives float­ing in the water while fish­ing. After tast­ing them, he real­ized they had shed their bit­ter taste and offered a unique fla­vor.

Mountanos said that the nat­ural cur­ing of olives in sea salt brine for six to 12 months results in fer­mented olives with high lev­els of pro­bi­otics, the bac­te­ria con­sid­ered essen­tial for a healthy gut.

“Extra vir­gin olive oil gets all the heart-healthy buzz, but olives are a pow­er­house of essen­tial nutri­ents in their own right,” she added. ​“Olives are also rich in monoun­sat­u­rated fats, which pro­mote car­dio­vas­cu­lar health and con­tain iron, cop­per, cal­cium and fiber.”

“I con­sider myself lucky, and I want to share the remark­able trea­sures of south­ern Greece the best I can,” Mountanos said. ​“My home­town, Koroni, and the mem­o­ries my fam­ily and I have cre­ated there are inter­wo­ven with every­thing we do at Kosterina.”

“Our mis­sion is to con­tinue to prove that healthy can also be deli­cious and that the mod­ern Mediterranean diet is the best for over­all health,” she con­cluded.

• Grasas y Aceites