Oleosophia — Olive Oil Sommelier in Greece’s Peloponnese

A Conversations feature | Freedom Always

There is a moment Marianna Devetzoglou describes that stops you mid-scroll. A family dinner in a small village in the Peloponnese. A bottle of olive oil — not from a supermarket shelf, but pressed from trees rooted in the same land for generations. One taste, and a city girl from Athens began to ask questions she didn’t know she had. She was 28 years old. That dinner changed everything.

The City Girl Who Fell for the Grove

Marianna grew up in Athens — studied there, lived there, moved through major cities the way ambitious young scientists do. After completing her undergraduate degree in physics at the University of Athens, she headed to London for a Master’s degree in Materials for Energy and Environment, drawn toward the intersection of science and the natural world. She returned to Greece to work with the National Research Institute on EU-funded projects around autonomous vehicles and mobility. A clear, impressive trajectory.

And then she met George.

As their friendship became a romance and their futures began to merge, George brought her to his family’s village — and to that dinner, and that olive oil. “I tasted an oil so different to the one my family had been using from the supermarket,” she recalls. “And I started asking questions.” She learned, for the first time, that olive varieties exist in extraordinary diversity — each with its own profile, aroma, bitterness, and story. That practices and terroir shape every drop. That what most of us reach for in the grocery aisle is a very pale shadow of what olive oil can be.

George, meanwhile, carried his own quiet longing. He had been selling the family’s harvest in bulk to traders — and the disappointment of that arrangement had long sat heavy with him. One evening, the two looked at each other and wondered aloud: What if we built a community of people who could know our olive oil the way we know it?

“Amongst different feelings — some of which being uncertainty and fear of the unknown — our excitement prevailed,” Marianna says. Greece was deep in economic crisis. The timing was objectively uncertain. They did it anyway.

In 2018, the year they married, Oleosophia was born. They kept their day jobs and built their vision in the evenings — developing the brand, approaching partners, studying everything there was to know about olive oil. By 2019, they had their first partnership in Switzerland. In 2020, just before the pandemic arrived, Marianna completed her first certification as an olive oil sommelier. In 2021, they began welcoming guests to the grove. In 2023, she earned her Master’s degree from the Spanish School of Olive Oil. Cooking classes followed last year.

The younger version of Marianna — the city girl, the physicist, the Londoner — would not believe any of it. “It even took my friends a while,” she laughs.

Science as a Way of Seeing

What Marianna will tell you, if you ask, is that her scientific background never left her. It simply found a new home.

“Having a scientific foundation is essentially all about the way you think and approach things,” she explains. She can read lab analyses, attend technical seminars, and parse the physico-chemical language of olive oil production with ease. But perhaps more valuably, her training gave her the ability to translate complexity into clarity. “I can break down complex information and convey it in a simple language for consumers and non-experts to understand — without the jargon.”

This gift — the ability to hold deep technical knowledge lightly enough to share it — is at the heart of what makes an experience with Marianna so memorable. She knows the science. She just doesn’t lead with it.

“I had to unlearn the idea that food should be explained technically before it is felt,” she reflects. “Olive oil is often discussed in numbers — acidity, phenols, intensity. Those matter. But they are not the first language of food.”

The Blind Tasting: Trusting What You Already Know

At Oleosophia, guests are invited into a sensory experience that begins with a simple but radical premise: set aside the label, the price, the reputation. Trust your palate.

During the blind olive oil tasting, Marianna guides visitors through a process of slowing down and noticing — of becoming present with what is in the glass. “When someone tastes olive oil blind, something shifts,” she says. “They begin to notice. That moment of awareness is powerful. It reconnects people to themselves. And that, to me, is more important than any award.”

What she hopes people carry with them afterward is not a list of varietals or a certificate of experience. It is something quieter and more lasting: confidence. “I hope they leave knowing they can choose with their palate and with their connection to a land, not marketing. But beyond that, I hope they carry a renewed curiosity — to taste more carefully, to cook more intentionally, to notice texture, aroma, bitterness, sweetness.”

She speaks about the senses the way someone speaks about a relationship they have worked to deepen. Working so closely with smell, taste, and texture has changed how she moves through daily life. She notices the smell of cut grass now. Of earth after rain. Of flowers opening. “It makes everyday rituals feel meaningful,” she says, “and reminds me to slow down — which, running a business, a home, and raising two kids, I need.”

If you’d like to experience a tasting at Oleosophia for yourself, you can book directly here: TASTING BOOKING LINK Be sure to use code FREEDOMALWAYSEXP at checkout for 5% off.

Women in the Olive Grove

Ask Marianna about female representation in her industry and she answers without hesitation — and without bitterness, though the picture she paints is a complicated one.

“Agriculture in Greece is a male dominant sector — still slow in progress, conservative, and resilient to change,” she says. In many small family operations, women work the land without recognition or pay, their labor folded into the category of “what you do for the family.” That is shifting with her generation, she notes — more women entering the field, more people with degrees and open minds. Internationally, she sees the same gradual opening: chemists, producers, nutritionists, engineers, all women, all finding their voice in olive oil.

She has experienced both the challenge and the advantage of being a woman in this world. Older generations have sometimes not taken her seriously, she acknowledges — seen her work as a hobby rather than a business. Balancing family, home, and Oleosophia is a constant negotiation. But she has arrived at a perspective that is, like everything about Marianna, both grounded and expansive.

“As women, we tend to be more community oriented, value oriented, heritage and ethos oriented,” she reflects. “I now see ourselves like keepers of life — we learn, we pass the knowledge, we create new things, we bond partners, and we work not only for our future, but for our children’s future. And that is a unique honor and advantage.”

What Oleosophia Is Really Building

When Oleosophia began, Marianna thought she was building a brand around olive oil. What she was actually building, she now understands, was a bridge.

“Between land and table. Between Greece and the world. Between tradition and modern life.”

Her role has evolved from product-focused to something closer to storytelling and experience curation. She creates spaces — in the grove, in the kitchen, online — where people can slow down and truly taste. Where a shared meal becomes a conversation. Where someone thousands of miles from Greece can feel, unexpectedly, at home.

“Food has the ability to connect us instantly — across cultures, languages, generations,” she says. “Being part of that connection never stops feeling meaningful.”

Looking three years ahead, she sees more of that connection — more immersive retreats, more curated tastings, more meaningful collaborations. Not bigger for the sake of scale. Deeper for the sake of impact. More time in the grove, in the kitchen, in conversation. Less administrative noise.

“Oleosophia grows as I grow,” she says simply, “and I grow as Oleosophia grows.”

One Feeling To Leave You With

If you remember only one thing from meeting Marianna Devetzoglou — or from reading her story here — she hopes it is warmth.

If her work has found you here and you’d like to bring a piece of Oleosophia into your own kitchen, her olive oil is available to order directly below — each bottle a small piece of the Peloponnese, pressed with intention and care.

Shop Marianna’s olive oil here: Use code FREEDOMALWAYSPROD at checkout for 5% off your order.

Oleosophia is an olive grove and tasting experience located in the Peloponnese, Greece. Learn more and connect with Marianna at oleosophia.com. If you want the full story of Oleosophia, read my earlier post

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