Vasilakis is a handmade soap workshop in Polygyros, Halkidiki, in northern Greece, founded by Antonis Vasilakis in 2013. It operates from his grandfather’s 1939 stone and earth cottage in an olive grove above the Kassandra Gulf, and makes cold process soap based on organic extra virgin olive oil.

How are the soaps made?

By cold process saponification, entirely by hand. The soap mass is mixed and poured into stainless steel moulds, cut and sealed individually, then cured on open wooden shelves for weeks before being wrapped by hand.

Organic extra virgin olive oil is the base of every bar. The traditional Castile bar adds only water, coconut oil and sodium hydroxide. Other varieties use certified essential oils, wild herbs from Mount Cholomontas, and honey, beeswax and propolis from monastery hives. There are no synthetic dyes, preservatives or fragrance compounds.

Where does the tradition come from?

From the family and from Polygyros. Antonis Vasilakis’s grandmother Maria made soap at home from the family’s olive oil, and his father Georgos, a teacher and olive grower, took the practice up again in 1996 and developed the recipe over years before the workshop opened in 2013.

How long does a bar last?

Longer than an uncured soap, because weeks of curing harden the bar and drive off water. The main variable is drainage: kept on a draining dish and allowed to dry between uses, a 120g bar lasts considerably longer than one left in standing water.

Is the packaging recyclable?

Yes. The bars are wrapped by hand and the packaging across the range is recyclable and free of plastic. The gift set is printed with an image of the family house and the olive grove around it.

Antonios G. Vasilakis Handmade Soap

Discover the Unparalleled Quality of Vasilakis

The method is cold process saponification, carried out entirely by hand. Organic extra virgin olive oil is the base of every bar. The soap mass is mixed, poured into stainless steel moulds, cut and sealed, then set out on wooden shelves to cure for weeks. Curing is what turns a soft, alkaline block into a hard, mild bar, and it cannot be hurried.

What is in the bars is deliberately narrow. The traditional Castile bar lists four things: olive fruit oil, water, coconut oil and sodium hydroxide. The scented bars add certified essential oils, wild herbs gathered on Mount Cholomontas, and beekeeping products including honey, beeswax and propolis. There are no synthetic dyes, no preservatives and no fragrance compounds anywhere in the range.

What makes Vasilakis special

Cold process saponification done by hand, with each bar cut, sealed and wrapped individually.
Organic extra virgin olive oil as the base of every bar in the range.
A workshop housed in the founder’s grandfather’s 1939 stone and earth cottage, standing in the olive grove.
Essential oils, Mount Cholomontas herbs and beekeeping products in place of synthetic dyes, preservatives and perfume.
A recipe developed within one family over three generations, from household use to a registered workshop in 2013.

Halkidiki is the three-fingered peninsula that reaches south from Thessaloniki into the Aegean. Polygyros, its capital, sits inland on the slopes of Mount Cholomontas, high enough for oak and chestnut forest, close enough to the sea that olives have always grown on the lower ground. It is a landscape of small holdings, beehives and herb slopes, and the soap draws on all three.

VIEW PRODUCTS

The People Behind Vasilakis

Antonis Vasilakis founded the workshop in Polygyros, Halkidiki in 2013. He read Physical Education at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, with a specialisation in special education, and changed direction after 2011 towards the land his family had always worked. The olives and the oil came first. The soap followed from them.

Behind him stand two earlier makers. Maria Vasilaki, his grandmother, made soap at home for the household from the family’s own olive oil, in the way most Polygyros households once did. Georgos Vasilakis, his father, a schoolteacher and olive grower, returned to the practice as a hobby from 1996 and worked out the recipe the business now uses. The gift packaging carries an image of the family house and the grove where all of this happened.

How Vasilakis began

Household soap making in Polygyros was an autumn job done with the year’s oil, and it had largely disappeared as a domestic habit by the time Georgos picked it up again in 1996. He was not making it to sell. He was making it because he had the oil and the knowledge was still recoverable, and he kept adjusting the formula for well over a decade.

His son took what was by then a tested recipe and gave it a workshop, a name and a wrapper. Production moved into the grandfather’s cottage in 2013, and the range grew to eight varieties. The Thessaloniki poet Dinos Christianopoulos wrote approvingly of the soaps as coming out of the creative tradition of Polygyros.

Cold process, cured slowly

Cold process means the oils and the lye are combined without applied heat, so the reaction runs at its own pace over the following days. It keeps more of the character of the olive oil in the finished bar, and it produces the soft, creamy lather that olive oil soap is known for.

The bars then rest on open wooden shelving in the cottage while the water evaporates and the pH settles, and only afterwards are they wrapped. Nothing is stamped out at speed, which is why no two bars are quite identical in colour or edge.

Why this matters

Every bar is made, cut, sealed and wrapped by hand rather than pressed by machine.
Organic extra virgin olive oil is the base ingredient, not a listed trace.
The curing period runs to weeks, which is what makes a cold process bar hard and long lasting.
Herbs are gathered on Mount Cholomontas and the beekeeping ingredients come from monastery hives.
Packaging across the range is recyclable and free of plastic.

“Vasilakis makes soap the way Polygyros households once made it in autumn, from the family’s own olive oil, cured on wooden shelves in the cottage where the grove begins.”

A Daily Ritual from Halkidiki

Each Vasilakis bar comes out of a place where olive oil was never a speciality purchase. It was the household’s own, pressed nearby, used for cooking, for lamps and, once a year, for soap. The bars are made for daily washing rather than for display, and they are priced and sized to be used up.

Cold process olive oil soap, 120g, cured for weeks before wrapping
Organic extra virgin olive oil with certified essential oils
Wild herbs from Mount Cholomontas and honey, beeswax and propolis from monastery hives
No synthetic dyes, preservatives or fragrance compounds
Suitable for face, body and hair, depending on the variety

Vasilakis brings together an olive growing family, a recipe recovered rather than invented, and a soap tradition that belonged to the kitchens of Halkidiki long before it belonged to anyone’s shelf.

Vasilakis: What Sets Cold Process Olive Oil Soap Apart

Two things decide what an olive oil bar is like: the oil it starts from and the way it is turned into soap. Vasilakis is specific on both counts, and the wrapper says so.

Quality	Description
Olive oil base	Organic extra virgin olive oil is the principal ingredient in every variety, drawn from the growing tradition the family came from.
Cold process	Oils and lye combined without applied heat, so saponification runs slowly and the character of the oil carries into the bar.
Slow curing	Bars rest on open wooden shelves for weeks before wrapping, which is what makes a cold process soap hard and slow to dissolve.
Short ingredient list	The traditional Castile bar contains four ingredients: olive fruit oil, water, coconut oil and sodium hydroxide.
Natural scenting	Scent comes from certified essential oils, Mount Cholomontas herbs and beekeeping products, with no fragrance compounds or synthetic dyes.

The result is a bar with a soft, creamy lather and a quiet scent that sits close to the skin. Laurel and rosemary is green and resinous, lavender and almond oil is floral and cool, propolis and spearmint is sharper, and the plain Castile bar smells of almost nothing at all, which is the point of it.

Daily Use of Vasilakis Soap

Olive oil soap behaves differently from a commercial bar: the lather is lower and creamier, and the bar lasts longer if it is allowed to dry between uses. A slatted or draining dish is worth more to it than anything else.

Use	How to Enjoy
At the basin	The traditional Castile bar, with four ingredients and no essential oils, is the plainest option in the range for hands and face.
In the shower	Lavender and almond oil or ylang-ylang for a scented wash, worked up slowly: olive oil soap rewards a little patience with the lather.
Washing hair	The laurel and rosemary bar is the traditional choice for hair, following the old Levantine and Greek practice of laurel in soap.
Shaving	Pine and eucalyptus gives a creamy lather and a cool, resinous scent, brushed up in a bowl for a wet shave.
As a gift	The gift set pairs two bars in packaging printed with the family house and grove, which makes it a straightforward souvenir of Halkidiki.

Keep bars dry between uses and out of standing water. A cold process olive oil soap that drains properly will outlast one left sitting in a puddle by a wide margin.

Sustainable and Ethical Practices at Vasilakis

At Vasilakis, the environmental position is mostly a consequence of the method rather than a policy bolted on afterwards. Cold process saponification uses no applied heat. The workshop is a 1939 cottage that was restored rather than replaced. The oil comes from organic cultivation, and the scenting ingredients are gathered locally: herbs from the slopes of Mount Cholomontas, honey and propolis from monastery hives in Halkidiki.

What is left out matters as much. A bar of soap with four ingredients and a recyclable, plastic free wrapper is a small thing, but it is a small thing that leaves very little behind it.

Their approach

A soap made from the family’s own agricultural tradition, in the building where that tradition sat, using a recipe passed from a grandmother who made soap for the house to a father who spent years getting it right to a son who turned it into a workshop in 2013. Everything is done by hand: mixing, pouring into stainless steel moulds, cutting, sealing, weeks of curing on wooden shelves, then wrapping. The olive oil is organic extra virgin, the essential oils are certified, the herbs come off Mount Cholomontas and the honey, beeswax and propolis come from monastery hives, with a collector’s edition built around monastic apicultural ingredients including pollen and royal jelly. The range now runs to eight bars and a gift set, and reaches customers in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Slovakia alongside Thessaloniki, Athens and the towns of northern Greece.

VIEW PRODUCTS

A Composition You Can Read on the Wrapper

Vasilakis works to a standard that is easy to state and hard to fake: every ingredient in every bar is one a customer can identify. The traditional Castile bar contains olive fruit oil, water, coconut oil and sodium hydroxide, and nothing else. The lavender bar adds milk, sweet almond oil and lavender essential oil. Across the whole range there are no synthetic dyes, no preservatives and no fragrance compounds, and the packaging is recyclable and plastic free. That restraint is the product, and it is why the bars have to be cured for weeks rather than pushed through a line in a day.

VIEW PRODUCTS

Frequently Asked Questions About Vasilakis

What is Vasilakis?

Vasilakis is a handmade soap workshop in Polygyros, Halkidiki, in northern Greece, founded by Antonis Vasilakis in 2013. It operates from his grandfather’s 1939 stone and earth cottage in an olive grove above the Kassandra Gulf, and makes cold process soap based on organic extra virgin olive oil.
How are the soaps made?

By cold process saponification, entirely by hand. The soap mass is mixed and poured into stainless steel moulds, cut and sealed individually, then cured on open wooden shelves for weeks before being wrapped by hand.
What is in the soap?

Organic extra virgin olive oil is the base of every bar. The traditional Castile bar adds only water, coconut oil and sodium hydroxide. Other varieties use certified essential oils, wild herbs from Mount Cholomontas, and honey, beeswax and propolis from monastery hives. There are no synthetic dyes, preservatives or fragrance compounds.
Where does the tradition come from?

From the family and from Polygyros. Antonis Vasilakis’s grandmother Maria made soap at home from the family’s olive oil, and his father Georgos, a teacher and olive grower, took the practice up again in 1996 and developed the recipe over years before the workshop opened in 2013.
How long does a bar last?

Longer than an uncured soap, because weeks of curing harden the bar and drive off water. The main variable is drainage: kept on a draining dish and allowed to dry between uses, a 120g bar lasts considerably longer than one left in standing water.
Is the packaging recyclable?

Yes. The bars are wrapped by hand and the packaging across the range is recyclable and free of plastic. The gift set is printed with an image of the family house and the olive grove around it.

Explore the Vasilakis Collection

VIEW ALL

JOURNAL

Know What You’re Tasting

The Journal is where we go deeper into the stories and knowledge behind the collection, so you can understand what makes a product distinctive before it ever reaches the table.

It is a place to understand the details that matter, and the reasons a product earns its place with us.

View all

PREVIOUS NEXT

Antonios G. Vasilakis: Cold Process Olive Oil Soap from a 1939 Cottage in Halkidiki