On a Friday evening in September, the Grand Rapids Downtown Market will smell like a Greek hillside at dawn. That's when Old World Olive Co. hosts Behind the Bottle, a free evening with a 5th-generation Greek olive oil family ranked among the top five olive oil producers in the world. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. for light appetizers from Field & Fire and Sav Sav, with wine available for purchase, and the presentation runs from 6 to 8 p.m. on September 11 at the Market's 435 Ionia Avenue SW home. Guests are asked to RSVP in advance, noting which of Old World Olive Co.'s locations they plan to attend.
The event is built around the Liokareas family, whose story begins in a corner of Greece where olive trees are older than almost any other living thing. In 1850, Antonis Liokareas acquired the first family plot of premium olive orchards and nicknamed the land "Perivolatha," which translates to "Premium Orchard." He left instructions that were as much a family constitution as a farming note: the orchards must be passed down to a son bearing the Liokareas name and could not be sold under any circumstance for five generations. That decree has held.
Antonis passed his harvesting techniques to his son Fotios, who carried the tradition through the turn of the century, expanding the estates and planting thousands of Koroneiki trees, the hardy Greek variety known for producing intensely peppery, grassy oil. Fotios handed the work to his son Panayiotis in the 1914 generation, and it was Panayiotis who made a mark that villagers still talk about. In 1935, he purchased and installed the village's first stone press. The stones were quarried, delivered by boat, and took more than two days to roll uphill to the Liokareas Estate, a feat of logistics that became family legend.
The mid-century years scattered the family. Seeking economic relief after World War II, Panayiotis left Greece for America with his son Yiannis, leaving another son, Antonis, in charge of the groves. Yiannis, emigrating at eighteen, landed in Pittsburgh, where he built a successful business but continued to instill in his own son, another Panayiotis, a love for the land and the traditions of the family farm. That younger son, known in America as Peter, spent his school breaks in Greece, learning the art of olive pressing from his grandfather. In 2002, he assumed the rights to Perivolatha, becoming the custodian of a legacy that had been protected through five generations. Today the family produces award-winning extra virgin olive oil from those same Koroneiki trees, and its name appears on lists of the world's finest producers.
The evening at the Downtown Market is designed to go behind the bottle in the most literal sense. Guests will learn how olive varieties, harvest timing, freshness and production methods influence the flavor and quality of extra virgin olive oil, then take part in a guided tasting of the family's oils while hearing about the land and the centuries-old traditions behind each bottle. The presentation is hands-on and direct, led by the producers themselves, not by a distributor or a brand ambassador.
The night ends with something rarer than a tasting. Old World Olive Co. and the Liokareas family will introduce an all-inclusive olive harvest trip to the family's estate in Greece, a journey that has already taken over 270 people to the groves since 2019. Guests who sign on will walk through the olive groves, participate in the harvest, follow the olives from tree to mill, and taste freshly pressed extra virgin olive oil at its absolute freshest. The trip includes flights, ground transportation in Mercedes Sprinter vans with professional drivers, all meals, luxury hotel accommodations, and a small group capped at thirty people. A professional photographer travels along, capturing roughly two to three hundred images per guest on a personalized flash drive, so nobody has to choose between living in the moment and documenting it. Translators stay with the group at all times, and the itinerary balances the Acropolis and ancient villages with swimming in the Mediterranean and beach time.
The hosts behind the evening are Shasta Fase and Cory DeLong, founders of Old World Olive Co., a Michigan-based company with four tasting rooms in Plymouth, Rockford, and two in Grand Rapids, including one inside the Downtown Market itself. Their own origin story mirrors the one they celebrate: after traveling through the olive groves and villages of Italy, Greece, Spain, Sicily and Malta, they returned to Michigan with a dream of creating a place where the unhurried Mediterranean table could live on here. Their stores carry more than fifty varieties of extra virgin olive oils and balsamic vinegars, and their staff guide customers through pairings and health benefits the way a sommelier walks a diner through a wine list.
The Downtown Market, which opened in 2013, was itself a dream years in the making, built through the leadership of Grand Action with design by Hugh A. Boyd Architects. It's a LEED Gold-certified, mixed-use facility with more than twenty vendors, two full-service restaurants, an incubator kitchen, rooftop greenhouses, and the nation's first kid-friendly demonstration kitchen. It was meant to revitalize a neglected corner of the city and reintroduce neighbors to a once-underutilized Grand Rapids locale, and it has. On September 11, it will host a family whose orchards have been protected by decree since 1850, pouring oil from trees that have stood through wars, emigration, and the invention of everything we now take for granted.
The tasting is free, but the real offering is the story: a farm that could not be sold for five generations, a family that spans Pittsburgh and the Peloponnese, and an invitation to stand in the groves during harvest and taste oil at the moment it is born. As the Liokareas family record books put it, the orchards were to be passed down, under any circumstance, through five generations. September 11 is a chance to meet the generation that kept the promise.