Odysea Olive Oil: An Honest Review of a Greek Importer's Range
If you have picked up a bottle of Odysea olive oil in a delicatessen or a supermarket and wondered whether it is genuinely good or simply well presented, this review is for you. Odysea is one of the most visible Greek food brands in Britain, and its olive oil range is wider and more technical than most shoppers realise. What follows is a plain account of who the company is, what its oils actually are, which of its marks mean something, where Odysea is genuinely ahead of us, and where a single-estate oil answers a different question altogether. We have written it from the company's own published material rather than from reviews.
For our own oil, see our cold-pressed organic Marrakech olive oil.
The Short Answer
- Odysea is a British importer and brand, not a grower or a miller. It was started in 1991 by Panos Manuelides, who began by selling Greek olives from a stall on Portobello Road, and it now supplies restaurants, delicatessens, department store food halls and supermarkets including Sainsbury's and Waitrose.
- The olive oil range is mostly Koroneiki, the small Greek cultivar that dominates serious Greek oil, drawn from two headline areas: the Kalamata region in the southern Peloponnese and the Chania region of western Crete.
- Two of the range's oils carry protected marks. Odysea's Kalamata oils are labelled PDO, and its Cretan oils PGI Chania. Those are geographical guarantees, not quality rankings, and it is worth knowing the difference.
- Odysea publishes something most brands do not: a measured polyphenol figure. Its Good For You oil is stated at 624 mg/kg of total polyphenols for the 2025 harvest, with a guaranteed minimum of 250 mg/kg to the best-before date. That is a genuine, checkable commitment and we will credit it plainly.
- The honest limit of the model is that Odysea buys from producers rather than owning the grove. Its Early Harvest oil names its grower, Yannis Sellas of the Nemea region, which is unusually transparent; most of the range names a region rather than an estate.
- Sidr & Stone's olive oil answers a narrower question: one family-owned, rain-fed, organically grown grove on the plains outside Marrakech, cold-pressed within hours of harvest, unfiltered, one harvest a year. Not better on every axis. Different on the axis of traceability.
Who Odysea Is, and What the Company Actually Does
Odysea's own account of itself is refreshingly unmysterious. In 1991 Panos Manuelides began bringing Greek food to Britain by selling premium Greek olives from a market stall on Portobello Road. As it grew, he identified a gap for high-quality authentic Greek products, and Odysea was founded on that premise. Three decades on, the company describes a range built for restaurants, hotels, gastropubs, delicatessens, independent retailers and department store food halls, and its oils now sit on Sainsbury's and Waitrose shelves too.
The important structural point, and the one that shapes everything else in this review, is what Odysea does and does not own. It says that members of its team have travelled the length and breadth of Greece searching for the finest local producers, which is a description of sourcing, not of farming. Odysea is a curator and an importer. It selects growers and mills, sets specifications, buys the oil, and puts its name and its quality assurance on the bottle.
That is a real function and it is worth saying so clearly. A good importer is doing genuine work: finding producers, tasting across harvests, rejecting lots, holding a standard year after year, and carrying the risk when a season disappoints. The trade-off is equally real. When a brand does not own the grove, the specific piece of land behind any given bottle can change from harvest to harvest without the label changing at all.
The Odysea Olive Oil Range, Line by Line
Read as a whole, the range is more considered than a supermarket shelf glance suggests. It is built around two Greek regions, one dominant cultivar, and a handful of deliberate exceptions.
| Oil | Region | Cultivar | Mark | Notable |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kalamata Extra Virgin | Kalamata, southern Peloponnese | Koroneiki | PDO | Grown and pressed in the region; the range's anchor |
| Organic Kalamata Extra Virgin | Kalamata, southern Peloponnese | Koroneiki | PDO, organic | Monovarietal, from organically grown olives |
| Chania Extra Virgin | Chania, western Crete | Koroneiki | PGI | Hand-harvested into nets; Great Taste award winner |
| Organic Chania Extra Virgin | Chania, western Crete | Koroneiki | PGI, organic | Cold-extracted within hours of harvest |
| Good For You Polyphenol | Chania, western Crete | Koroneiki | PGI area | Early harvest from water-stressed groves; polyphenol figure published |
| Early Harvest | Nemea, Peloponnese | Megaritiki | None stated | Named grower; young, very green fruit |
| Greek Extra Virgin | Southern Peloponnese | Koroneiki | None stated | Sourced from a family-owned business; catering formats |
Two things stand out. The first is the reliance on Koroneiki, which is not a marketing choice so much as an agronomic one: it is a small, high-yielding, oil-rich cultivar that carries flavour and keeps well, and it is the reason Greek oil has the reputation it has. We have written about it separately in our guide to Koroneiki olive oil.
The second is the Early Harvest, which breaks the pattern deliberately. It is made from Megaritiki olives picked young and very green in the Nemea region of the mainland, and Odysea names the person who sources it. Naming a grower on a supermarket-adjacent product is not common, and it is the single most transparent thing in the range.
PDO Kalamata and PGI Chania: What Those Marks Actually Guarantee
This is where most reviews of Odysea go wrong, usually by treating a protected mark as a quality score. It is not one. A protected designation is a guarantee about place and process, and it is only as demanding as the specification behind it.
Odysea's own product pages make a correction that many sellers never bother with: the Kalamata in PDO Kalamata olive oil refers to the mountainous region in the southern Peloponnese, not to the large purple table olive of the same name. The oil is pressed from Koroneiki. It is a common and understandable confusion, and Odysea addresses it in print rather than letting the ambiguity work in its favour. We deal with the same confusion at length in our guide to Kalamata olive oil.
| Label | What it guarantees | What it does not guarantee |
|---|---|---|
| PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) | Growing, and normally pressing, inside a defined zone, to a published specification | Any particular estate, any particular harvest date, or any published lab figure |
| PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) | A defined geographical link, with at least one production stage in the named area | That every stage happened there, or that the fruit was picked early |
| "Greek extra virgin olive oil" | Grade at the point of pressing, and Greek origin | Region, cultivar, estate, harvest date or milling window |
Used properly, as Odysea uses them, these marks narrow the field considerably. A PDO Kalamata oil cannot quietly become a blend of Spanish and Tunisian oil, which is more than can be said for a great deal of what sits on a British shelf. What the marks will not tell you is which grove, which slope, or which week the fruit came off the tree.
The Good For You Oil and the EU Polyphenol Rule
Odysea's Good For You oil is the most technically interesting thing the company sells, and it deserves crediting properly. It is produced in the Chania region of Crete from Koroneiki olives picked early from water-stressed groves, and Odysea states a measured figure: 624 mg/kg of total polyphenols for the 2025 harvest, with a guaranteed minimum of 250 mg/kg held until the best-before date.
The reason both numbers are there is regulatory. Under EU Regulation 432/2012 an olive oil may carry the authorised polyphenol wording only if it delivers at least 5 mg of hydroxytyrosol and its derivatives per 20 g of oil, which is roughly a tablespoon and a half. Polyphenols fall as an oil ages, so a brand that wants to carry that wording through a product's whole shelf life has to start high enough that it is still above the threshold at the end. Publishing the harvest figure and the guaranteed floor is the honest way to do that, and it is a considerably better disclosure than the vague "high in antioxidants" that most of the category prints.
Two honest caveats. A polyphenol number is a measure of a particular chemistry, not a verdict on an oil, and a high-phenol oil is deliberately bitter and pungent in a way not everyone wants over a salad. And the figure applies to that one line, not to the range: Odysea does not publish an equivalent number for its Kalamata PDO or its everyday Greek oil, and neither, at present, do we.
The Objections Worth Taking Seriously
"If Odysea does not grow the olives, what is the brand actually adding?" A fair question, and the answer is: selection, specification and consistency. Someone has to taste across dozens of lots, reject the tired ones, insist on cold extraction within hours of picking, and hold a standard when a bad season makes that expensive. That work is invisible on the label but it is real, and it is why a good importer's everyday oil usually beats an anonymous supermarket own-label.
"Isn't a protected designation just a sticker?" No, but it is a narrower promise than it looks. It fences the geography and the specification. It does not fence the estate, the harvest window, or the analytical result. Treat a PDO as a floor you can rely on rather than a ceiling you have reached.
"Odysea publishes a polyphenol figure and Sidr & Stone does not. Isn't that a strike against you?" Yes, on that specific axis, and we are not going to talk our way around it. Odysea publishes a measured harvest figure and a guaranteed minimum for one of its oils. We do not yet publish laboratory figures for our olive oil, because our first harvest has not yet been analysed. What we can publish today is where every drop comes from, which is a different kind of evidence and not a substitute for the other.
Where Odysea Is Genuinely Ahead of Us
Three things, stated plainly. Odysea has more than thirty years of trading history in a category where longevity is genuinely informative; a brand that has been buying Greek oil since 1991 has seen a lot of harvests go wrong. It holds protected designations across most of the range, which is a formal third-party check we do not have. And it publishes a measured polyphenol figure with a guaranteed floor on one line, which is more disclosure than the overwhelming majority of olive oil brands manage.
It also has organic certification on two of its oils. Our own grove is organically grown, without synthetic fertilisers, pesticides or herbicides, but we do not hold a formal organic certificate and we describe it that way rather than borrowing a mark we have not earned.
Reading Odysea's product pages in preparation for this review, the thing that stood out was how little of the marketing rests on adjectives. The Kalamata page corrects a misconception that would have flattered the product. The Good For You page prints a number that can be checked and a floor that can be held to. That is a company arguing from evidence, and we would rather compete with that than with a page full of superlatives.
Why Sidr & Stone
Where Odysea curates across a region, our oil answers a narrower question: which grove, which season, which pressing. That is the whole of our argument, and it is worth being precise about what it does and does not buy you.
- Single-estate. One family-owned grove on the plains outside Marrakech, Morocco, with no blending across origins.
- Rain-fed. No irrigation; the trees take what the season gives them.
- Organically grown. No synthetic fertilisers, pesticides or herbicides.
- Single harvest. A small, limited batch once a season; when the pressing is gone, it is gone until next year.
- Cold-pressed within hours of harvest, which is what protects flavour, aroma and polyphenols.
- Unfiltered extra virgin, minimally processed, and it may show a little natural sediment.
- 100% natural — one ingredient, olive oil, nothing added.
- Dark glass with a gold label, because light is the fastest way to spoil a good oil.
- Halal certified.
- 10% of profits to charity, across every product we sell.
- Fulfilment in the UK, EU and US.
| Odysea | Sidr & Stone | |
|---|---|---|
| Model | Importer and brand; sources from Greek producers | Single-estate; one grove, one owner |
| Origin stated | Region (Kalamata, Chania, Nemea) | One grove near Marrakech, Morocco |
| Blending across origins | Not across countries; region-level sourcing | None |
| Protected designation | PDO and PGI on most of the range | None |
| Organic status | Certified organic on two oils | Organically grown, not certified |
| Published lab figure | 624 mg/kg polyphenols, 2025 harvest, one line | Not yet published |
| Harvest | Multiple lines, multiple harvest windows | One small harvest a year |
We will not tell you Sidr & Stone is the best olive oil — that would be the very claim this review warns against. What we will say is that our oil is single-estate Moroccan, rain-fed, organically grown, and cold-pressed within hours of harvest, and that the evidence of that care is in the taste, the colour and the size of the season's batch. If you want the fuller version of why estate-level origin matters at all, we set it out in our guide to single-estate olive oil.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Odysea olive oil any good?
On the evidence of the company's own published specifications, yes — it is a well-constructed range. Most of it is Koroneiki from two respected Greek regions, several lines carry protected designations, two are certified organic, and one publishes a measured polyphenol figure. The honest limit is that Odysea sources rather than farms, so the bottle tells you a region rather than a grove.
Where does Odysea olive oil come from?
Mainly two areas: the Kalamata region of the southern Peloponnese and the Chania region of western Crete. The Early Harvest oil is an exception, coming from the Nemea region of the mainland Peloponnese.
Is Odysea olive oil made from Kalamata olives?
No, and Odysea says so itself. Its PDO Kalamata oil is pressed from Koroneiki olives; the word Kalamata in the name refers to the region, not to the large purple table olive most people picture.
What is the difference between Odysea's PDO and PGI oils?
A PDO ties the oil more tightly to its place, with growing and normally pressing inside the defined zone to a published specification. A PGI requires a genuine geographical link with at least one production stage in the named area. Both are guarantees about place and process, not quality scores.
Does Odysea own its own olive groves?
Its published material describes sourcing from Greek producers rather than owning groves or mills. For the Early Harvest oil it names the grower; elsewhere it names the region and, in one case, a family-owned supplier business.
Which Odysea olive oil has the most polyphenols?
The Good For You oil, which Odysea states at 624 mg/kg of total polyphenols for the 2025 harvest with a guaranteed minimum of 250 mg/kg to the best-before date. It is an early-harvest Cretan Koroneiki, and it tastes noticeably bitter and peppery as a result.
Where can you buy Odysea olive oil?
Directly from the company's own website, from delicatessens and independent food shops, and from supermarkets including Sainsbury's and Waitrose. Availability varies by line — the catering tins are easier to find direct than in store.
Is olive oil a medicine?
No. Olive oil is a food, not a medicine. It has a long traditional history — including being honoured in the Prophetic Sunnah — and a substantial body of modern research, particularly around polyphenols, cardiovascular health, and the Mediterranean diet pattern. It can be a worthwhile part of a healthy routine, but it does not cure diseases and is not a substitute for medical care. Be cautious of any olive oil marketed with specific disease-cure claims.
Final Thoughts
Odysea is a good example of a category that is more honest than its reputation. It is not pretending to be a farm. It is an importer with three decades of buying behind it, a coherent Greek range, protected designations where they apply, and one line where it publishes a number it can be held to. If you want a dependable Greek oil from a company that has been doing this since 1991, the argument for it is straightforward.
The question worth asking yourself is which kind of certainty you actually want. A protected designation gives you a region and a specification. A named grower gives you a person. A single estate gives you a plot of land and a single pressing, which is the narrowest and most checkable answer of the three — and also the one that means the oil runs out. Neither answer is superior in the abstract. They are answers to different questions, and it is worth knowing which one you are asking. If you would like a fuller framework for that decision, our guide to choosing a quality olive oil walks through it step by step.
Our cold-pressed organic Marrakech olive oil — single-estate, rain-fed, organically grown and pressed within hours of picking — is available to pre-order. First harvest, estimated shipping from November 2026. Fulfilment in the UK, EU, and US.
Pre-Order Sidr & Stone Organic Marrakech Olive Oil — Limited First Harvest →
Disclaimer: This article describes Odysea's publicly stated product specifications, sourcing and company history at the time of writing; brand practices and specifications may change, and readers should check current sources. Comparisons are made in good faith and in fair terms. Olive oil is a food, not a medicine, and is not a substitute for medical treatment of any condition. For any health concern, consult a qualified medical professional.