I grew up in Carthage, right on the coast in Tunisia. The olive trees there were already old when I was small. They were old when my parents were small, too.
The oil from those trees was never a product. It was just part of life. On bread. On tomatoes. On sunburned skin. On the ends of my hair, until my grandmother eventually gave up because my hair had developed a personality of its own.
There was the grove, and there was us. It was only a short walk between the two.
01/03
Discovering Polyphenols
I went down the olive oil rabbit hole to figure out why it had always made me feel better. It led me to polyphenols, the naturally occurring plant compounds researchers have been studying for years for their role in gut health and inflammation.
Funny what you find buried in scientific journals. I ended up right back where I started: with the olive oil my grandmother rubbed into my hair and my grandfather still drinks with breakfast.
I sent our oil to a lab and the results came back high. Really high. Nearly 7x the industry standard for polyphenols. Our little grove had been quietly outdoing the entire wellness aisle for generations.
It's single-origin oil from our family farm, harvested early and pressed for potency, not yield. We made it into a daily shot instead of a cooking oil because, honestly, that's the most honest way to take something this concentrated.
It's my way of bringing together two worlds: the one that measures everything, and the one I grew up in, where the good things didn't need explaining. They were simply part of life.
Our farm sits in Testour, in Tunisia's Medjerda River Valley. My grandfather has cared for this land for nearly 30 years. It gets long days of sun, a mild climate, and water from the river that runs beside it. We grow Chetoui olives, a variety native almost exclusively to Tunisia and naturally among the richest in polyphenols anywhere in the world.
That's what gives the oil its unmistakable character: intensely green, boldly peppery, with a slow burn at the back of your throat. That peppery finish isn't a flaw. It's the oleocanthal and oleacein, two of the most studied polyphenols in olive oil.
We harvest once a year, in October and November, and press the olives immediately. One farm. One variety. One harvest.
The Details
The perfect conditions
My grandfather bought our farm 26 years ago in Testour, nestled in Tunisia's Medjerda River Valley. More than 5,000 olive trees stretch across 148 hectares in a place that seems made for growing them. Long days of sun. A mild, steady climate. The Medjerda River flows nearby, nourishing this land for centuries.
The rest is what happens when you stop getting in nature's way.
The soil is fertile. The climate is remarkably consistent. Everything the trees need is already here, and you can taste it in the oil: intensely green, herbaceous, and unmistakably alive. It's the kind of complexity you don't manufacture. You grow it.
About Chetoui
Native to Tunisia
We grow Chetoui olives, a variety native almost exclusively to Tunisia and found almost nowhere else on earth. They're naturally among the richest in polyphenols, with a flavor that's intensely green, boldly peppery, and pleasantly bitter.
High Potency
That peppery finish isn't a flaw. It's a sign. Oleocanthal and oleacein, two of olive oil's most researched polyphenols, are what give exceptional oil its unmistakable bite.
Harvested Fresh
Our olives are harvested once a year, in October and November, then pressed immediately while they're at their freshest. Nature sets the schedule. We don't argue with it.
Our Purpose
We've made being healthy so complicated. Stacks of supplements, ten-step routines, and honestly most of it is just more stuff for your body to deal with. Meanwhile the places where people actually live the longest, healthiest lives, the blue zones, the Mediterranean, aren't doing any of that. They eat real, simple, single-ingredient food, and they've eaten that way forever.
Real health doesn't start with adding more, it starts with the foundation, with food. One real ingredient that's potent on its own does more than twenty things fighting each other in your gut. And so much of how we feel, the energy, the inflammation, traces back to the gut and to what we actually eat. If you want to fix something, you start at the root, not the symptoms. That's the whole idea behind Alya.
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