A continuation of what was always on our table.

I grew up spending summers between the Mediterranean and the Aegean, where olive oil and honey were part of everyday life.

Our olive oil came from our family’s small grove near ancient Kydonies. At the table, it was served simply with fresh thyme, alongside honey from my grandparents, who kept bees. Dinners were long, often extending late into the evening. I never thought much about where these things came from. We knew because they came from us.

Years were marked by summers around the Aegean and journeys to the Greek islands. Olive groves, small apiaries and the sea were a familiar landscape. Food was local by default, often coming from family, a neighbor or a place we knew.

Only after moving to North America at 26 did I understand what I had taken for granted.

I found it surprisingly difficult to find olive oil with the same freshness and provenance. Many were blends, with little connection to a particular grove or harvest. So I began sourcing oils from small farms across Greece, Turkey and France, first for my own kitchen and later for friends and family.

In 2025, following a period of health issues, I began looking more closely at the science of olive oil, particularly its naturally occurring polyphenols. What started as curiosity became a very specific search.

Even our family’s olive oil did not reach the concentration I was looking for.

With the help of a friend, that search led to a small estate in Diodia, Messenia. Here, Koroneiki olives are harvested early, while still green, and extracted within hours. The estate produced what I had been looking for: an oil with exceptional provenance and character, and a measured polyphenol concentration of 947 mg/kg.

After years of privately sourcing olive oil for my own table, I had found the one I wanted to build something around.

That became MIELA.

The name returns to another part of my family history. My grandparents were beekeepers, and my mother grew up loving the bees and the practice of keeping them. Years later, she named me Melissa, from the Greek word for honeybee.

Today, I keep a hive of my own in Malibu.

Olive oil and honey have followed me from the Aegean to California, and eventually back to Greece through MIELA.

A continuation of what was always on our table.