about

About us

Our story.

We are Laura and Marco van Hellenberg Hubar. We both inherited interest and preference for quality and tasty food. But our olive oil adventure together only started in 2015, in Greece. We were there doing fieldwork for Laura's Master's thesis. We combined the research with a holiday and it became an educational tour-along-producers.

How it all started with a white bottle of Greek olive oil

The fieldwork interviews covered quality marks for food products in the EU and were held with policy makers from the Ministry of Agriculture in Athens and with producers of feta, pistachio and olive oil. Here the seed of our olive oil company Tafelverhalen was planted.

It was during this trip that we got to know Cristina who, together with her brother Kostas, produces LIÁ - a premium extra virgin olive oil from Messinía in the Peloponnese.

We got two bottles of olive oil to take home and we let friends and family taste it. They were amazed at the fresh taste and aroma of this extra virgin olive oil, which was oddly new to them. More and more often we heard around us: "There are so many different olive oils available - how do I know which one really is good?" We got a lot of demand for LIÁ and decided to import an initial load.

With Kostas & Cristina, producers of LIÁ

first Italian expansion of the range

With Marco's Italian roots, an Italian expansion of the range was inevitable. But because we want to know where our olive oil comes from, we first planned a trip through southern Italy, where we met people from the olive oil network of LIÁ producer Cristina. From the most romantic spots from southern Italy you can imagine we eventually added two Italian olive oils to our range. .

Quality, transparency and innovation

To guarantee quality, we prefer family businesses that only produce olive oil themselves, and therefore do not buy in bulk from other producers. This helps to make sure we know where the olives come from. We bring the olive oils from the producers to you in a short, transparent chain.

All the olive oils in our shop are high quality extra virgin olive oils, produced on a small scale using innovative methods and packed in a beautiful bottle.

So many olive oils, so many flavors

Every olive oil is different. The taste is determined by, among other things, the type of olive (there are many different varieties of olives from which olive oil is made), the climate and the harvest time.

Due to the differences in smell and taste between different olive oils, it is interesting to experiment with dishes. Everyone has their own taste, so try which olive oil you like best! We can also tell you more about it in an olive oil workshop or tasting.

view our workshop possibilities>