MYST is a Greek ultra premium food brand based at Skotina on the foothills of Mount Olympus, in Pieria. It was created in 2014 by founder and chief executive Ioannis Tsapanidis with co-founder and president Sakis Dalkalitsis, building on a family presence in the local olive groves that the company traces to 1920. The range covers extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, honey, spice blends, herbs and mountain tea.

Where do the olives come from?

From groves in Pieria, on the foothills of Mount Olympus in northern Greece. The mountain is the country’s highest and its first national park, with more than 1,700 recorded plant species on the massif.

What does MYST olive oil taste like?

Fruity and well balanced, with aromas of herbs and citrus fruit, a floral top note and a peppery finish that carries. The early harvest is what gives it that pungency rather than a soft, sweet character.

The same extra virgin olive oil with 24 karat edible gold flakes suspended in it, bottled at 500ml. Gold is inert and tasteless, so the flakes are visual: they catch the light in the bottle and on the plate without altering the flavour of the oil.

How is MYST olive oil made?

The olives are picked green at the end of October, carried in crates, milled within 24 hours in a certified two-phase mill and cold extracted at a maximum of 27°C. The oil is bottled unfiltered, with acidity between 0.2% and 0.5%.

MYST holds ISO 22000 food safety certification, and the groves are worked without synthetic fertilisers or pesticides.

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The olives are picked at the end of October, deliberately early, while the fruit is still green and unripe. Early picking costs yield and returns a more pungent, intensely fruity oil in exchange. The fruit travels in crates rather than sacks, reaches a certified two-phase mill within 24 hours of leaving the tree, and is cold extracted at a maximum of 27°C. The oil is bottled unfiltered.

What that discipline produces is an oil with aromas of herbs, citrus fruit and a floral top note, balanced rather than aggressive, with real length on the finish. Free acidity is declared between 0.2% and 0.5%. The groves are worked without synthetic fertilisers or pesticides.

What makes MYST special

Olives grown in the Pieria foothills of Mount Olympus, Europe’s most botanically rich national park.
Late October early harvest, picked green, milled within 24 hours.
Cold extraction at a maximum of 27°C, bottled unfiltered.
Fleur de sel hand-harvested from the Kitros salt pans, a Natura 2000 wetland in northern Pieria.
ISO 22000 food safety certification, with organic and USDA organic certification on the organic lines.

Pieria is a narrow band of country between the Thermaic Gulf and a mountain that rises to 2,918 metres. Sea air, altitude and more than 1,700 recorded plant species, roughly a quarter of the entire Greek flora, make for a distinctive growing environment.

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The People Behind MYST

Ioannis Tsapanidis founded the MYST brand in 2014 and runs the company as chief executive, with Sakis Dalkalitsis as co-founder and president. The business operates from Skotina, at the base of Olympus, on ground the family has farmed for generations.

The founding idea was to take produce that had always been sold locally and give it a name, a specification and packaging worth the contents, with as much thought in how a bottle looks and behaves as in what goes into it.

How MYST began

The family’s account puts its beginnings in 1920, among the olive groves at the foot of Olympus. For most of the following century the work was agricultural: growing, harvesting, pressing, selling on.

MYST as a brand dates from 2014, when Tsapanidis set out to present the region’s produce as a finished, certified, export-ready range. The company has since grown into an integrated food production operation handling private label work, wholesale and supply to professional kitchens.

Harvest and mill

Timing is the decision that governs everything else. Green, unripe olives carry more of the aromatic and phenolic compounds that give an oil its bite, its herbal top notes and its keeping quality. Ripe fruit yields more oil and less character.

From there the sequence is about limiting damage. Olives go into ventilated crates, not bags, so the fruit at the bottom is not crushed and warmed in transit. The two-phase mill uses no added process water, which would otherwise carry off the water-soluble compounds. The oil goes into the bottle unfiltered, keeping the fine sediment that holds much of the aroma.

Why this matters

An early harvest gives more phenolic content and a more pungent, greener oil.
Crate transport and a 24 hour window to the mill prevent fermentation before pressing.
Unfiltered bottling keeps the aromatic fraction that filtration removes.
A certified 456 mg/kg hydroxytyrosol reading on the organic oil, verified for the Olympia awards in 2021.
One landscape supplies the oil, the salt, the honey and the herbs.

“MYST reads the mountain as a whole: green olives from the Pieria slopes, salt from the Kitros pans below, honey and herbs from the forests in between.”

A Daily Ritual from Mount Olympus

Each MYST product belongs to the everyday cooking of northern Greece, where good oil, good salt and a handful of dried herbs do most of the work and the rest is timing.

Early-harvest extra virgin olive oil, unfiltered, from the Olympus foothills
An organic BIO bottling and a GOLD edition carrying 24 karat edible gold flakes
Fleur de sel and sea salt from the Kitros pans, brine-washed and sun-dried
Wild Greek pine honey, dark amber and slow to crystallise
Spice blends built for one dish, tzatziki among them, with no artificial flavours or preservatives

Together the range makes a legible Greek pantry: one oil for finishing and cooking, one salt worth using at the table, honey that is more resinous than sweet, and blends that shorten the distance between an idea and dinner.

MYST: What Sets an Olympus Extra Virgin Olive Oil Apart

Every quality decision in this oil is made before the bottle is filled, in the grove, in the crate and at the mill. The specification below is what those decisions add up to.

Quality	Description
Origin	Olives from the Pieria foothills of Mount Olympus, a national park holding more than 1,700 plant species, around a quarter of the Greek flora.
Early harvest	Picked at the end of October while the fruit is green and unripe, which gives the oil its pungency and its herbal, grassy character.
Cold extraction	Milled within 24 hours in a certified two-phase plant at a maximum of 27°C, so the volatile aromatics survive the process.
Free acidity	Declared between 0.2% and 0.5%, well inside the 0.8% limit for extra virgin, a direct reading on fruit condition and handling speed.
Unfiltered	Bottled without filtration, keeping the natural cloudiness and the aromatic compounds it carries.
Certification	ISO 22000 food safety across production, with organic and USDA organic certification on the organic lines.

In the glass the oil is fruity and well balanced, with herbs, citrus and a floral lift, and a peppery finish that lingers. The GOLD edition adds 24 karat edible gold flakes to the same oil, which suspend and turn slowly when the bottle is moved.

Daily Use in the Greek Kitchen

An early-harvest oil with this much aroma rewards being tasted rather than hidden. The suggestions below start with the uses where the character comes through most clearly.

Use	How to Enjoy
Raw, over food	Poured over grilled vegetables, beans, tomatoes or fresh cheese, where the citrus and herb notes and the peppery finish are most legible.
With bread and salt	Good bread, MYST oil and a pinch of Kitros fleur de sel. The simplest way to judge any oil, and the way to taste both at once.
Fish and lamb	Brushed on before the grill and again after, with lemon and oregano, in the northern Greek manner.
Tzatziki	A spoonful of the MYST tzatziki mix into 200g of Greek yoghurt with grated cucumber, oil and a little vinegar. Rest it an hour before serving.
Gifting and the table	The GOLD edition is designed to be opened in company, poured at the table where the gold flakes are visible in the bottle and on the plate.

Store all the oils away from heat and light, upright and closed, and use within a year of opening. Freshness, not age, is the quality worth protecting in an extra virgin olive oil.

Sustainable and Ethical Practices at MYST

At MYST the sourcing map is short by design. The olives, the salt, the honey and the herbs come from one mountain and the coastal plain below it, which keeps the distance between harvest and processing measurable in hours rather than days.

The groves are cultivated without chemical fertilisers or pesticides. The salt is hand-harvested from the Kitros pans, washed in brine and dried under the sun without additives. Packaging across the range is designed to be recyclable, and the company states that respect for nature, for people and for long-term partnerships is the basis on which it works.

Their approach

MYST holds ISO 22000 food safety certification across production, with organic and USDA organic certification on its organic lines, and runs the whole chain from a single site at Skotina: harvest, crates to the mill, cold extraction, unfiltered bottling. The salt comes from the Alikes Kitrous pans in northern Pieria, roughly 15,000 hectares of protected wetland where it is still lifted by hand and sun-dried. Around that core, Ioannis Tsapanidis and Sakis Dalkalitsis have built a range of honey, bee pollen, spice blends, herbs and Olympus mountain tea drawn from the same landscape, alongside private label and professional kitchen work that keeps the line busy year-round.

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Award-Winning Oil, Honey and Design

MYST has been recognised on both sides of the bottle. The oil took silver at the Athena International Olive Oil Competition in 2020, against 430 oils from 17 countries, silver at the London International Olive Oil Competition the same year among 511 entries from 25 countries, and silver at the Japan Olive Oil Prize, also in 2020. The organic forest honey took bronze at the Specialist Awards in 2023, praised by judges for its uniform crystallisation and amber colour. The packaging has done just as well: first place in the packaging category of the A’ Design Awards in 2017, gold at the Novum Design Awards in 2019, a Hall of Fame place in the DAC ranking of the fifty strongest packaging designs of a decade, and a gold GAMA award for food innovation in 2017.

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Frequently Asked Questions About MYST

What is MYST?

MYST is a Greek ultra premium food brand based at Skotina on the foothills of Mount Olympus, in Pieria. It was created in 2014 by founder and chief executive Ioannis Tsapanidis with co-founder and president Sakis Dalkalitsis, building on a family presence in the local olive groves that the company traces to 1920. The range covers extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, honey, spice blends, herbs and mountain tea.
Where do the olives come from?

From groves in Pieria, on the foothills of Mount Olympus in northern Greece. The mountain is the country’s highest and its first national park, with more than 1,700 recorded plant species on the massif.
What does MYST olive oil taste like?

Fruity and well balanced, with aromas of herbs and citrus fruit, a floral top note and a peppery finish that carries. The early harvest is what gives it that pungency rather than a soft, sweet character.
What is MYST GOLD?

The same extra virgin olive oil with 24 karat edible gold flakes suspended in it, bottled at 500ml. Gold is inert and tasteless, so the flakes are visual: they catch the light in the bottle and on the plate without altering the flavour of the oil.
How is MYST olive oil made?

The olives are picked green at the end of October, carried in crates, milled within 24 hours in a certified two-phase mill and cold extracted at a maximum of 27°C. The oil is bottled unfiltered, with acidity between 0.2% and 0.5%.
Is MYST certified?

MYST holds ISO 22000 food safety certification, and the groves are worked without synthetic fertilisers or pesticides.

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Myst: Ultra Premium Olive Oil from Mount Olympus