Science Drives Award-Winning Producer’s Mission of Quality, Sustainability

Summary

Arsen Khachaturyants, a math­e­mati­cian with a culi­nary back­ground, is pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil in Tuscany, spe­cial­iz­ing in Tuscan olive vari­eties and aim­ing for bal­ance in fla­vor. He uses social media to edu­cate con­sumers about the prod­uct, has won awards for his Ora brand, and plans to expand to inter­na­tional mar­kets while fac­ing chal­lenges related to cli­mate change and pro­duc­tion costs.

On the same hill where Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei ran an exper­i­ment to cal­cu­late the speed of light nearly four cen­turies ago, an aspir­ing math­e­mati­cian with a strong culi­nary back­ground is pro­duc­ing one of the world’s best extra vir­gin olive oils.

“The story began when I was at NYU [New York University] fin­ish­ing my Bachelor’s degree in pure math­e­mat­ics in Japanese in 2019,” said Arsen Khachaturyants, the founder of Arsenio.

At that time, Khachaturyants, whose fam­ily lives in Florence, the cap­i­tal of Tuscany, saw an oppor­tu­nity to begin pro­duc­ing wine.

“We started plant­ing vine­yards, which take about three to five years before the first har­vest,” he said. ​“While wait­ing for the vine­yards, I saw that we had all these beau­ti­ful old olives and decided to pro­duce olive oil.”

Khachaturyants was already famil­iar with the prod­uct, hav­ing worked in Michelin-starred restau­rants in France, and was eager to exper­i­ment with the local vari­eties.

He began har­vest­ing the cen­turies-old trees that remained in good con­di­tion, tak­ing the olives to a local mill equipped with state-of-the-art Mori-Tem equip­ment to trans­form them with min­i­mal oxy­gen expo­sure. 

Khachaturyants also replaced some trees dam­aged by the 1985 frost, adding new Tusan olive vari­eties.

“We spe­cial­ize only in Tuscan vari­eties: Frantoio, Leccino, Leccio del Corno and Moraiolo,” he said. ​“I espe­cially like Leccio del Corno, which is not a very famous Tuscan vari­ety, but I decided to plant it because I think it has a very nice bal­ance as a mono­va­ri­etal and in the blends.”

Khachaturyants har­vests and mills each organ­i­cally cul­ti­vated vari­ety sep­a­rately at its peak of ripeness, then metic­u­lously tastes each batch to craft the Ora brand.

His goal is to bal­ance bit­ter­ness and spici­ness that is still widely appeal­ing to the pub­lic, who may be accus­tomed to milder olive oils.

“We must be bal­anced,” Khachaturyants con­firmed. ​“We must not over­power with spici­ness. Although we still make it spicier than the aver­age olive oil, bal­anc­ing with the sweet­ness of Leccino.”

On social media, Khachaturyants posts videos to edu­cate peo­ple that the bit­ter­ness and spici­ness of extra vir­gin olive oil indi­cate it is rich in polyphe­nols, adding that the North American mar­ket, espe­cially in California, is quite recep­tive to the mes­sage.

Khachaturyants’s mis­sion to pro­duce high-qual­ity and fla­vor­ful extra vir­gin olive oil has been inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized, with the Ora brand receiv­ing con­sec­u­tive Gold Awards in the 2024 and 2025 edi­tions of the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

“Entering qual­ity com­pe­ti­tions is a nice way to under­stand that you are mov­ing with the mar­kets in the same direc­tion and that oth­ers appre­ci­ate your taste pro­file,” he said. ​“These com­pe­ti­tions also show your cus­tomers that you are legit­i­mate as a pro­ducer.”

“With the blend, we see olive oil with the same phi­los­o­phy as wine pro­duc­tion,” Khachaturyants added. ​“We don’t try to make the same blend every year. Olive oil is a liv­ing prod­uct, so it should not be the same every year.”

For exam­ple, the 2024/25 crop year was marked by an extremely hot sum­mer in Tuscany, which Khachaturyants said resulted in a smooth and less spicy blend.

Looking ahead to the 2025/26 crop year, he said the sit­u­a­tion in the groves appears promis­ing after a warm start to spring gave way to cooler weather, although exces­sive rain could alter that. 

“ Since we’re at the top of the hill, the micro­cli­mate is very par­tic­u­lar, and the ter­roir is also dis­tinct,” he said. ​”The flow­ers are bloom­ing, and the ger­mi­na­tion is just begin­ning. Right now we have a lot of rain, maybe too much, but I’m sure we still have a lot of sur­prises to come.”

Khachaturyants is san­guine about the sit­u­a­tion. He said the rain has not been very heavy so far, which has not inter­fered sig­nif­i­cantly with pol­li­na­tion. 

As part of his efforts to edu­cate his cus­tomers about olive oil, he pro­vides fre­quent social media updates from the olive grove. 

“ We try to give these updates to our con­sumers and fol­low­ers, so they under­stand what’s hap­pen­ing,” he said. ​“We try to be fully trans­par­ent about what’s hap­pen­ing in our olive grove.”

Khachaturyants believes this open­ness with con­sumers helps them under­stand why extra vir­gin olive oil costs sig­nif­i­cantly more than other edi­ble oils.

Through the videos and posts, they can see the labor-inten­sive nature of the man­ual har­vest, which Khachaturyants can­not mech­a­nize due to the steep ter­rain.

His pro­duc­tion costs are fur­ther ele­vated by har­vest­ing ear­lier, which fre­quently achieves a six to ten per­cent oil yield, and by his deci­sion to main­tain full-time employ­ees to com­plete the har­vest instead of hir­ing sea­sonal work­ers. 

While it increases his annual costs, Khachaturyants said he never has to worry about hav­ing enough peo­ple to har­vest, a prob­lem cited as a top con­cern by 34 per­cent of pro­duc­ers in the 2024 Olive Oil Times Harvest Survey.

“I don’t believe in hir­ing sea­sonal work­ers,” he con­firmed. ​“You need to train them to iden­tify trees ready to har­vest and select healthy olives while dis­card­ing unhealthy ones.”

Instead, Khachaturyants said that cli­mate change and its links to an increase in extreme weather events are the main chal­lenges fac­ing olive oil pro­duc­ers in Tuscany, cit­ing extreme heat at unusual times of the year and heavy rain­fall dur­ing oth­ers as exam­ples.

Based on some of his uni­ver­sity course­work, includ­ing a math­e­mat­ics and cli­mate change class, Khachaturyants believes a tip­ping point has been reached; cur­rent and future gen­er­a­tions must adapt.

“If you stop all the pro­duc­tion of oil and gas, stop defor­esta­tion and plant mil­lions of hectares of for­est, there’s not much chance of chang­ing what’s hap­pen­ing,” he said. ​“For sure, we need to be ready for the impacts of cli­mate change to esca­late.”

Leaning once again on his back­ground in math­e­mat­ics, Khachaturyants said arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence could pro­vide a solu­tion for olive oil pro­duc­ers, aug­ment­ing the nat­ural resilience of the olive tree.

For exam­ple, he said AI analy­sis of data col­lected from spe­cial sen­sors or image detec­tion could quickly iden­tify olive pea­cock spot dis­ease on olive leaves and the tell­tale signs of olive fruit fly dam­age.

Khachaturyants has installed sev­eral mete­o­ro­log­i­cal sta­tions in the olive groves and vine­yards to ana­lyze soil, wind, and rain pat­terns, as well as tem­per­a­tures and humid­ity. 

“ AI can help us react faster,” Khachaturyants added, cit­ing its poten­tial to breed more heat and drought-resis­tant olive tree vari­eties.

“At some point, we can start think­ing about clonal selec­tion like the wine indus­try,” Khachaturyants said. ​“They try to use the same vari­ety, but a clonal vari­a­tion that might be bet­ter adapted to cli­mate change.”

Each year, Khachaturyants pro­duces between 8,000 and 10,000 bot­tles of Ora, which he mainly sells via e‑commerce. He is begin­ning to export to China, Japan and the United States and plans to expand to the United Kingdom in 2026.

“China is an inter­est­ing mar­ket, it’s a grow­ing mar­ket, and you feel that they have this inter­est in olive oil,” he said. ​“It’s not as strong yet as the Japanese mar­ket. The Japanese love Italian food and cul­ture, but China is grow­ing quickly.”

“This year we are also going to enter the American mar­ket on Amazon,” despite the ten per­cent tar­iff imposed by the United States on nearly all imports, he said. 

Khachaturyants antic­i­pates that the cost of pay­ing the tar­iff will be some­what off­set by using Amazon’s trans­port net­work com­pared to his usual e‑commerce plat­form. However, he said rais­ing prices is a pos­si­bil­ity.

“We don’t have large mar­gins,” he said. ​“We try to give to our cus­tomers the best pos­si­ble prod­uct with the most real­is­tic price we can pro­vide them.”