Our Heritage

In the heart of Tunisia, on the fertile lands of Sidi Bou Ali, our story unfolds amid groves that echo the ancient Roman fields of Zembra. For generations, our family has tended these sun-drenched trees, kissed by Mediterranean breezes, preserving a craft that began over 500 years ago. From this rich terroir, we harvest olives bursting with polyphenols—nature's antioxidants—blending tradition with innovation to bottle a heritage that nourishes both body and soul.

From grove to bottle, our process is sacred in its simplicity: We handpick our olives at peak ripeness from Sidi Bou Ali's sunlit groves, cold-pressing them within hours to capture their living essence. No blending with lesser oils. No chemical processing. No shortcuts. Our flagship Chemlali Edition Prestige—pure as the day our ancestors first pressed these same trees—delivers the full nutritional power that made olive oil the cornerstone of Mediterranean longevity. Each bottle carries the complete spectrum of polyphenols, antioxidants, and healthy fats exactly as nature designed them. This is not just olive oil—this is liquid wellness, traveling unchanged from our ancient soil to your modern table.

In our groves stand sentinels that have witnessed empires rise and fall—500-year-old Chemlali olive trees, their gnarled trunks telling stories of resilience that no book could capture. These ancient beings survived droughts that lasted decades, wars that scorched the earth, and winds that could uproot mountains. Yet here they stand, bearing fruit as they did for Carthaginian merchants, Roman nobles, and Arab scholars. Each tree is a living library, its roots diving 20 feet deep into soil enriched by millennia of fallen leaves, creating a terroir so unique that scientists have found over 200 distinct aromatic compounds in our oil—more than in the finest wines.

When autumn paints our groves in gold and purple, the same families who have tended these trees for multiple generations gather for the harvest. They know each tree by name, by the way its branches reach toward the dawn, by the particular sweetness of its fruit. The eldest can tell you which tree's oil helped cure the sultan's fever in 1623, which one provided the oil for a queen's wedding feast. No machines touch our trees—only hands that have learned from their grandfathers how to coax the olives down without bruising them, how to read the perfect moment when the fruit balances between green vigor and purple wisdom. This knowledge cannot be taught in schools; it lives in the calluses of hands, in the songs sung during harvest, in the prayers whispered to trees that have become family.

Through the centuries, many olive varieties vanished—victims of disease, changing climates, or simply forgotten. But Chemlali endured because it carries within its DNA the memory of survival. Its roots penetrate deeper than any other variety, finding water in underground rivers that flow from the Atlas Mountains. Its leaves, smaller and tougher than others, can withstand the scorching Saharan winds that would wither lesser trees. But most remarkably, Chemlali olives produce an oil so perfectly balanced that it needs no blending, no enhancement—nature's masterpiece, complete in itself. This is why ancient healers called it 'liquid gold,' why traders crossed deserts to obtain it, why modern science confirms what our ancestors always knew: this oil doesn't just nourish the body, it preserves life itself.