Discover the Unparalleled Quality of Kyklopas

The Makri variety, sometimes written Makris, is cultivated in a narrow zone around Alexandroupoli covering the villages of Makri, Chili, Dikella and Plaka. Its oil earned Protected Designation of Origin status on 10 August 2020, after an application lodged in January 2018 and three years of documentation, making it the only PDO product in Thrace. Kyklopas farms roughly 12,000 trees within that zone, around 2,000 of them under organic certification.

The rest of the quality argument is made at the mill. Olives are picked early, while the fruit is still green and the yield per tree is at its lowest, then moved to the press within about ninety minutes and extracted cold. The flagship Ages PDO Makris arrives at an acidity below 0.2%, a quarter of the 0.8% ceiling that defines extra virgin, and is bottled in fully opaque 500ml bottles with a flow control fitting.

What makes Kyklopas special

  • Monovarietal Makri olives, an indigenous Thracian cultivar grown in a single small coastal zone.
  • Elaiolado Makris PDO, registered in August 2020 and the only protected designation in Thrace.
  • Early harvest picking, with the fruit pressed within roughly ninety minutes and extracted cold.
  • Acidity below 0.2% on the Ages PDO Makris, well inside the extra virgin limit.
  • Vertical integration: the family grows, mills and bottles on its own site.

Thrace is not the Greece of the tourist imagination. It is a northern border region of tobacco fields, river delta and forest, and its olive belt is a thin coastal strip that survives because the sea moderates the winters. That marginal position is part of why the Makri variety stayed local, and why so little of this oil has ever left the prefecture.

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The People Behind Kyklopas

The People Behind Kyklopas

Argyris Kelidis grew up in Makri with the olive harvest as the shape of his year, learning the work from his parents before he had any thought of running a business. In 1982 he and Niki Kelidou established the mill that became Kyklopas Elaiotrivio Argyri Kelidi A.E. The family had been in olives for generations before that date; what changed in 1982 was that they stopped handing the fruit to someone else’s press.

The company is still family owned and family run. Its structure is unusually complete for its size: cultivation, milling, standardisation and bottling all happen under the same ownership, which is what allows the harvest window to be set by ripeness rather than by a mill’s queue.

How Kyklopas began

The starting point was a grove and a conviction that the local variety deserved better handling than it was getting. Building a mill was the first step, because control of the press is control of the oil.

The second step took decades: establishing that Makri was a distinct cultivar with a defined territory, worth protecting in law. That case was formally lodged in January 2018 and concluded with the PDO registration of Elaiolado Makris in August 2020. Kyklopas was among the producers pushing for it, and its Ages PDO Makris bottling was one of the first to carry the designation.

Picking early, pressing fast

Picking early, pressing fast

Early harvest is an expensive decision. Green olives hold less oil than ripe ones, so a producer who picks in October rather than December accepts a materially smaller volume from the same trees. What that fruit gives back is aromatic intensity and a higher natural polyphenol content, the compounds responsible for the bitterness and the peppery catch at the back of the throat.

Speed then decides whether any of it survives. Olives begin to degrade the moment they leave the tree, so Kyklopas mills its fruit within about ninety minutes of picking and keeps the extraction cold. The oil is filtered through paper rather than aggressively clarified, and goes into opaque glass, since light is the quickest way to undo the work.

Why this matters

  • Early picking trades volume for aromatic concentration and higher natural polyphenol levels.
  • Same-day milling within roughly ninety minutes limits the degradation that begins at harvest.
  • Cold extraction preserves the volatile compounds that give the oil its green character.
  • Opaque 500ml bottles protect the oil from the light that ages it fastest.
  • Owning every stage means harvest timing is a quality decision, not a logistical one.

“Kyklopas expresses one village and one cultivar: Makri olives picked green, milled within the hour and a half, and bottled where they were grown.”

A Daily Ritual from Thrace

Each Kyklopas bottle carries the food culture of the Greek northeast, a border kitchen shaped by Thracian, Anatolian and Black Sea cooking. Olive oil here goes over grilled fish from the Thracian Sea, into pulses and wild greens, and onto bread with the local sheep’s cheese.

  • Monovarietal Makri olives from the coastal groves around Alexandroupoli
  • Early harvest picking with same-day cold extraction
  • PDO Elaiolado Makris on the flagship bottling, with an organic line alongside it
  • Rooted in the border food culture of Evros and Thrace
  • A considered choice for cooks who taste their oil rather than simply pour it

Kyklopas brings together an ancient grove, a cultivar found in almost no other part of Greece, and a family mill that has spent four decades making the case for both.

Kyklopas: What Sets an Early Harvest Makri Oil Apart

Variety, timing and speed are the three things a producer can genuinely control, and they are where the differences between olive oils actually live. Kyklopas holds all three within one operation.
QualityDescription
Monovarietal MakriAn indigenous Thracian cultivar grown in a restricted zone around Alexandroupoli, giving a profile that is distinct from the Koroneiki oils of southern Greece.
PDO protectedElaiolado Makris was registered as a Protected Designation of Origin on 10 August 2020, the only such designation held in Thrace.
Very low acidityBelow 0.2% on the Ages PDO Makris, well under the 0.8% required for extra virgin, which reflects sound fruit milled promptly.
Early harvestGreen fruit picked ahead of full ripeness, accepting lower yields in exchange for aromatic concentration and a higher natural polyphenol content.

On the palate the oil leads with banana peel, freshly cut grass, green apple and tomato leaf, then turns to sweet green almond and a clear black pepper finish. It is resinous and herbal rather than simply smooth, and the bitterness is a feature of the style rather than a fault in it.

Daily Use in the Thracian Kitchen

An early harvest oil of this intensity rewards being tasted. Heat blunts the aromatics that the harvest date paid for, so the best uses are the ones that put the oil in front of you rather than under a lid.
UseHow to Enjoy
Raw, over foodPoured over tomatoes, grilled vegetables, beans and fresh cheese, where the grass and green apple notes come through most clearly.
With grilled fishAnchovy, sardine and sea bass from the Thracian coast, finished with the oil and lemon after they come off the heat.
Into pulses and greensStirred into lentils, chickpeas or boiled wild greens at the table, a fixture of northern Greek home cooking.
As a giftThe 500ml Ages bottlings come in gift bag and gift box presentation, and the four bottle bundle suits anyone building a tasting comparison.

Store away from heat and light, keep the cap on, and use within a year of opening. Olive oil does not improve with age, and freshness is the quality worth protecting.

Sustainable and Ethical Practices at Kyklopas

Sustainable and Ethical Practices at Kyklopas

At Kyklopas, roughly 2,000 of the 12,000 trees are farmed under organic certification, and the organic line has become one of the most decorated parts of the range. The groves themselves are ancient plantings on a coastal strip that has been worked continuously for a very long time, which sets a limit on how hard the land can reasonably be pushed.

Pruned branches are composted and returned to the grove rather than burnt, the natural ground vegetation between the trees is left in place, and packaging is chosen for recyclability. Production runs to ISO 22000 and ISO 9001 standards.

Their approach

A mill built in 1982 by a couple who had grown olives all their lives has turned into a vertically integrated operation of about 12,000 trees, roughly 2,000 of them organic, producing a monovarietal oil from a cultivar that grows in a handful of villages and nowhere much else, harvested green, pressed within about ninety minutes, extracted cold, paper filtered and sealed into opaque glass, then sold into more than twenty export markets under a Protected Designation of Origin that the region did not have until 2020. Argyris Kelidis and Niki Kelidou still run the business with their family, on the same coastal ground below the cave that gave the company its name.

Learn more about Kyklopas

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Award-Winning Olive Oil from Evros

Kyklopas has become the most consistently decorated producer of Makri variety oil, with a record built across the major international panels. Its Ages line took a double gold at the Athena International Olive Oil Competition along with the titles for best olive oil of the Makri variety and best olive oil from Thrace, and the range has since collected further golds at Athena, platinum at Berlin, and recognition at the Istanbul and Anatolian competitions, alongside awards for the organic bottlings at Biol and Olivalue. In the Olive Oil Times World Ranking for 2024, Kyklopas placed among the top Greek companies and its Ages PDO Makris among the leading individual oils. The producer’s own count now runs past 200 international quality awards.

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Frequently Asked Questions About Kyklopas

  • What is Kyklopas?

    Kyklopas is a family owned Greek olive oil producer, formally Elaiotrivio Argyri Kelidi A.E., based in Makri near Alexandroupoli in Evros, Thrace. Argyris Kelidis and Niki Kelidou built the mill in 1982 on land the family had farmed for generations, and the business grows, mills and bottles on its own site.

  • Where does the name come from?

    From the sea cave near Makri that local tradition identifies as the home of Homer’s Cyclops, the Kyklopas of the Odyssey. The groves lie just above it, on the line of the ancient Via Egnatia.

  • Which olive variety is used?

    Makri, also written Makris, an indigenous cultivar grown in a restricted zone around Alexandroupoli covering the villages of Makri, Chili, Dikella and Plaka. The Kyklopas Blend is the exception, combining other varieties.

  • What does PDO Makris mean?

    Elaiolado Makris was registered as a Protected Designation of Origin on 10 August 2020, following an application made in January 2018. It is the only PDO product in Thrace, and it ties the oil to both the Makri variety and its defined production zone.

  • What does early harvest mean here?

    The olives are picked while still green, ahead of full ripeness. This yields less oil per tree but gives a more concentrated aroma and a higher natural polyphenol content, which is what produces the bitterness and the peppery finish.

Explore the Kyklopas Collection

The Kyklopas range runs from the flagship Ages PDO Makris and the Ages Organic high phenolic bottling, both in opaque 500ml glass, through the Kyklopas early harvest extra virgin and the Kyklopas Blend, to naturally infused oils and a small cosmetics line made with olive oil and beeswax. It sits within our early harvest Greek olive oil collection, chosen for the same reasons: a named variety, a named village, and a harvest date that shows in the glass.
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