Why Green Agora exists | Ayhan's path to olive oil

The question I no longer ask today

When you lose someone so early, your mind eventually starts looking for explanations.

You go through possibilities, even though you know the past cannot be reclaimed.

Perhaps this should have been different.

Perhaps that.

Perhaps nutrition.

Perhaps lifestyle.

Perhaps anything that could have been changed in retrospect.

I know these thoughts.

Today, I know enough about science to be very careful with them.

Breast cancer is a complex disease.

Age, genetic factors, hormonal and reproductive factors, lifestyle, and other influences can play a role.

And for many affected women, it is simply not possible to find the one cause that explains everything in hindsight.

That is why I would never claim:

If my mother had eaten a certain olive oil, everything would have turned out differently.

No one knows that.

I certainly don’t.

And precisely because this question means so much to me personally, I do not want to use it to promise something to another person.

Olive oil is a food product.

Not a promise of invulnerability.

Not a substitute for medicine.

Not a retroactive key to the past.

I cannot correct the past.

But I can decide how carefully I handle questions, products, and people today.

Therefore, a question I could not answer eventually gave rise to another.

One with which I could work.

What would I do if my mother were standing in front of me today?

Many years later, I imagined a situation.

Not as a scientific thought experiment.

But as a son.

My mother is standing in front of me.

Not as a memory.

Not in a photograph.

But simply standing there.

And she says:

“Ayhan, find me a really good olive oil.”

Perhaps she wouldn't even ask about polyphenols.

Not about oleocanthal.

Not about free acidity or harvest time.

She would probably just give me this one task:

Find me something good.

What would I do?

I wouldn’t grab the most expensive bottle.

I wouldn’t let myself be convinced by the prettiest label.

I wouldn’t simply believe that Greece, Italy, or any other country alone guarantees quality.

I would want to know what is really inside that bottle.

I would ask.

A great many questions.

Which olive?

Which region?

Which producer?

Which harvest?

What were the fruits like?

How were they processed?

How was the oil stored?

How does it smell?

How does it taste?

What analyses are available?

And what do these analyses actually mean?

I would keep asking until the bottle was no longer just a bottle to me.

Until I could understand it.

Because for my mother, a nice story wouldn't be enough.

I would want to really know.

And at some point, I realized something that changed my path:

Why should I be any less careful with someone sitting across from me today?

Why should this care be reserved only for my own family?

The first school wasn't a lab | It was a delicatessen

Years later, I helped out in the delicatessen belonging to my wife and my father-in-law.

There, it was about Italian and Greek specialties and also, among other things, gastronomic clients.

And there, I kept hearing a seemingly simple question:

“Do you have a really good olive oil?”

At first, it sounds like a product question.

Over time, I realized:

It is actually a human question.

Because “really good” meant something different to everyone.

One person wanted mild.

The next wanted bitter.

Another was looking for that exact scratch in the throat.

Some people were looking for a taste from their childhood.

Others had only just learned that there could be major differences between two extra virgin olive oils at all.

And still others simply wanted to know:

Why does one bottle cost ten euros and another thirty?

I started to listen.

Back then, I didn't know that this would later become a central part of Green Agora.

Not everyone is looking for the same olive oil.

2014 | I stopped being just a buyer

Starting in 2014, I began to travel more intensively with my wife.

Turkey.

Greece.

Italy.

Later, France as well.

At the beginning, one could have said:

I was looking for products.

Today, I would describe it differently.

I slowly stopped traveling like a buyer.

I began to travel like a student.

I no longer just wanted to know:

What does the bottle cost?

What does it look like?

Can I sell it?

I wanted to understand:

Why does the same olive variety taste completely different from two producers?

Why is one oil intensely bitter and another soft?

Why does one scratch in the throat?

Why does a producer voluntarily lose oil yield and harvest earlier?

How much does a low free acidity value really tell us?

What happens in a modern olive mill?

What role do oxygen and temperature play?

What does polyphenol content mean?

And why can two lab reports apparently provide different numbers for the same subject?

The more answers I got, the more questions arose.

That has remained the case to this day.

The producers became my teachers

On these trips, I met people whose families have been growing olives for generations in some cases.

I saw olive groves.

Harvests.

Fruits at different stages of ripeness.

Mills.

Tanks.

Bottling.

And I learned something that sounds self-evident today:

Quality is not created the moment a beautiful bottle is filled.

The story begins much earlier.

With the variety.

With the location.

With climate and water.

With the condition of the fruits.

With the time of harvest.

With the transport.

Then comes the mill.

Crushing.

Malaxation.

Temperature.

Time.

Oxygen.

Separation.

Filtration.

And even after that, the work is not over.

An excellently produced oil can subsequently lose quality due to light, heat, oxygen, and time.

This led to one of my most important realizations:

Good olive oil is rarely the result of a single brilliant moment.

It is the result of many correct decisions in a row.

A small glass, a tickle in the throat, and a turning point

One tasting in particular has remained in my memory to this day.

It was with Atilla Totoş.

Atilla is a pharmacist and olive oil producer.

During one of my early, more intensive tastings, he set a small glass in front of me.

Of course, I knew olive oil.

I had eaten it.

I had sold it.

I had talked about it.

But I didn't know olive oil like that back then.

Not as something you can consciously take apart.

Not as a sensory language.

I put the oil in my mouth.

First came the aroma.

Then bitterness.

Then that tickle in the back of the throat.

Suddenly I had to cough.

A small glass.

A short tickle in the throat.

Actually nothing major.

And yet, something was different afterward.

Because within a few seconds, I had understood:

This food could be much more complex than I had perceived until then.

For the first time, I didn't just want to know if I liked an olive oil.

I wanted to understand why it tasted like that.

I couldn't explain what had just happened yet.

But that was exactly what made me curious.

I wanted to know.

The cough was given a name | Oleocanthal

Later, I encountered the term:

Oleocanthal.

Oleocanthal belongs to the phenolic compounds that can occur in extra virgin olive oils.

Scientific studies show that oleocanthal can trigger an unusually localized irritation, especially in the throat.

Sensory research links this phenomenon to, among other things, the TRPA1 ion channel.

Suddenly, a personal sensory experience was given a scientific background.

That fascinated me.

But here, I also learned a limit that is decisive for Green Agora today.

In 2005, the well-known foundational work by Beauchamp and colleagues showed that oleocanthal can affect the same cyclooxygenase enzymes under experimental conditions that are also studied in the context of ibuprofen.

That is interesting basic research.

But it must not become:

Olive oil is ibuprofen.

Or:

A pungent olive oil replaces medication.

Or:

The more it burns in the throat, the healthier the person is afterward.

That would be a completely different claim.

It was precisely at points like these that I began to understand:

Science becomes worthless if you turn an interesting result into a bigger story than the data can support.

Oleocanthal in olive oil | Formation, pungency, and analytical values

The throat is not a laboratory instrument

Today I can taste an oil and say:

It possesses clearly perceptible pungency.

The throat irritation is strong.

The bitterness is pronounced.

These are sensory observations.

But I cannot seriously say:

That is exactly 427 mg of oleocanthal per kilogram.

For that, I need an analysis.

And an analysis also needs context.

Which product?

Which harvest?

Which batch?

Which method?

Which analysis date?

The throat is not a laboratory instrument.

But the laboratory also does not possess taste buds.

One cannot replace the other.

Then I almost fell in love with numbers

When you start dealing with polyphenols, something seductive happens.

Suddenly, a food product has numbers.

400 mg/kg.

800 mg/kg.

1,500 mg/kg.

More.

Less.

And the human mind loves rankings.

Me too.

In the beginning, I therefore often thought:

What is the total polyphenol value?

The deeper I went, the more this single question lost its power.

Because under the broad term "polyphenols" lie different compounds.

For example:

• Hydroxytyrosol and derivatives
• Tyrosol and derivatives
• Oleocanthal
• Oleacein
• Oleuropein-related compounds
• other phenolic substances

And different measuring methods do not necessarily answer exactly the same analytical question.

A total number is therefore interesting.

But it is not the whole bottle.

A number is the beginning of a question | not the end of a consultation.

Measuring polyphenol content in olive oil | HPLC, qNMR, and laboratory analyses

Why there is no longer a table of product values here today

In an earlier version of my story, there were several Green Agora products listed here with fixed total polyphenol values.

Today, I would do things differently.

Not because analyses have become less important to me.

On the contrary.

Because I take them more seriously.

Olive oil is a natural product.

The next harvest may have different values.

A different batch may differ.

Storage time changes the product.

And different analysis methods can produce results that are not easily comparable with one another.

A personal story should not become technically outdated with the next harvest.

Current analysis values therefore belong where they can be kept up to date and correctly categorized:

in concrete product or analysis articles.

My story does not need a record-breaking number.

It needs the insight that has emerged behind the numbers.

Polyphenols in olive oil | Taste, analysis values, and EU Health Claim

The EU Health Claim taught me something important

At some point, I came across the authorized European Health Claim for olive oil polyphenols.

The approved wording is:

“Olive oil polyphenols contribute to the protection of blood lipids from oxidative stress.”

But this wording has specific requirements.

The oil in question must contain at least 5 mg of hydroxytyrosol and its derivatives per 20 g of olive oil.

Furthermore, it must be stated that the beneficial effect is obtained with a daily intake of 20 g of olive oil.

What interests me about this:

The legislator speaks very precisely.

Not:

Olive oil prevents diseases.

Not:

The more polyphenols, the healthier.

Not:

A high total polyphenol value automatically fulfills the requirement.

But:

a specific statement under specific conditions.

This, too, has changed my work.

If science is precise, marketing must not make it imprecise.

EU Health Claim for olive oil | Requirements and laboratory testing

Early harvest | Another simple rule that dissolved

Then came the early harvest.

It also fascinated me.

For certain varieties and under certain conditions, early-harvested olives can produce oils with:

• greener aromas
• more distinct bitterness
• stronger pungency
• higher concentrations of certain phenolic compounds

at the same time, the oil yield can be lower.

But once again, I had to learn:

Earlier is not automatically better.

Not every variety develops the same way.

Not every region has the same maturation process.

Not every year is the same.

And an early harvest cannot save poor processing.

Today, therefore, I am not only interested in:

When was it harvested?

But:

Why did the producer harvest at exactly this time?

Early harvest olive oil | Understanding "Early Harvest" correctly

And eventually I realized that even the word “cold-pressed” requires questions

In the past, to me, the term:

cold-pressed

automatically sounded high-quality.

Today, I look more closely.

European law, for example, distinguishes between:

first cold pressing

and:

cold extraction.

"First cold pressing" is a designation reserved for virgin olive oils from the first mechanical pressing under 27 °C in a traditional hydraulic press system.

"Cold extraction" denotes modern processes using percolation or centrifugation for virgin oils also obtained under 27 °C.

Many high-quality modern mills work with extraction and centrifugation systems.

Through this, I learned:

Tradition-sounding language is not automatically proof of quality.

The better question is:

How was it actually produced?

Premium quality does not have to look romantically produced. It has to be technically well-made.

The more I knew, the less often I said “the best”

In the beginning, I wanted to find the best olive oil.

One bottle.

One answer.

One winner.

Today, this idea sounds almost too simple to me.

What is better?

Tsounati or Koroneiki?

Kalamon or Kolovi?

Intense or mild?

1,000 mg total polyphenols or 500?

Early harvest or something more mature?

The answer is more and more often:

It depends.

And that is not an evasion.

It is precision.

An oil can be analytically spectacular and someone may not like the taste at all.

Another can be mild and harmonious and fit that exact person perfectly.

A rare variety can be fascinating.

An outstanding everyday oil can still be the better recommendation.

That is how my question shifted.

No longer:

What is the best olive oil?

But:

What is the right olive oil | for whom and for what purpose?

Then I discovered the second half of Green Agora | the human

For a long time, I had been working my way deeper and deeper into the product.

Variety.

Region.

Mill.

Harvest.

Sensory profile.

Polyphenols.

Oleocanthal.

Free acidity.

Analyses.

But eventually I realized:

I can understand the bottle perfectly and still give the wrong recommendation.

Namely, if I do not understand the person.

Today, I listen just as attentively as I taste.

What do you like?

What have you used so far?

How much bitterness do you like?

How do you react to pungency?

Do you cook every day?

Do you use olive oil primarily for salads?

As a finish?

Pure?

Are you interested in analyses?

Or do you simply want an excellent oil that you enjoy?

How quickly do you go through a bottle?

What intensity are you looking for?

Only then does personal advice begin for me.

This is not medical advice.

It is personal olive oil advice.

What I mean when I say | I feel a product

One could misunderstand this sentence.

That is why I state exactly what I mean by it.

When I perceive a product intensively, I want to understand:

• Olive variety
• Origin
• Region
• Producer
• Harvest
• Degree of ripeness
• Processing
• Fruitiness
• Bitterness
• Pungency
• Aftertaste
• Storage
• Analyses

I want to know why this bottle is the way it is.

I don't just want to be able to sell it.

I want to be able to explain it.

And what I mean when I say | I try to feel the human

This is nothing mystical either.

It means:

listening.

Not answering immediately.

Understanding taste.

Understanding experiences.

Sometimes also understanding uncertainty.

A customer says:

“I don't like bitter olive oil.”

Then my job is not to explain to them that they are tasting it incorrectly.

My job is to understand which intensity suits them.

Another says:

“I want an oil that I can really feel in my throat.”

That, too, changes the selection.

A third wants to compare lab analyses.

A fourth doesn't want to see any numbers at all.

People are standing in front of the same shelf.

But they are not standing there with the same taste.

Exactly at this point, Green Agora was born for me

At some point, I wanted a place where these two worlds come together.

Not just:

Shelf.

Bottle.

Price.

Checkout.

But a place where one is allowed to ask.

Why does this oil taste different?

Why is this one more bitter?

Why is that one milder?

What distinguishes Koroneiki from Tsounati?

What does this lab value say?

What does it not say?

Why does a certain oil cost more?

Which oil goes well with fish?

Which with vegetables?

Which one might I want to experience pure?

And:

Which one suits me?

Over time, commerce became a space of knowledge for me.

And from this thought, Green Agora developed.

The olive oil showroom | The stage is not the most important thing

Today, people can experience this world personally in the Green Agora olive oil showroom in Lüdenscheid.

There, different:

• producers
• olive varieties
• regions
• sensory profiles
• intensities

are side by side.

For me, the best part is not the shelf.

Not the floor space.

Not the bottles.

It is the moment when someone tastes two oils one after another and suddenly says:

“Now I understand the difference.”

That is what the space exists for.

The olive oil showroom is the stage. The encounter is the actual experience.

Visits and tastings are possible by appointment.

Olive oil tasting and personal advice in Lüdenscheid

What products have taught me

Over the years, I have had very different olive oils before me.

Tsounati.

Koroneiki.

Kalamon.

Kolovi.

Adramitiani.

Hondroelia.

And other varieties.

Products like Pamako or Kouros of Zeus, for example, have shown me how different olive oil can be, even though the same basic legal category can be on both bottles:

Extra virgin olive oil.

Different variety.

Different region.

Different sensory profile.

Different analytics.

Different personality.

And that is why I do not want to enhance one product today by making the other seem smaller.

Difference is not a deficiency.

Difference is exactly what makes olive oil interesting.

How do you recognize good olive oil?

What I do differently today than before

I used to want certainty.

Today, I want context.

I used to want to know:

Which oil has the highest number?

Today, I ask:

Which number was measured and how?

In the past, “earliest harvest” automatically sounded better.

Today, I ask:

Which variety, which region, and what goal?

In the past, “cold-pressed” was a seal of quality for me.

Today, I want to know:

What technical process?

In the past, I wanted to find the best olive oil.

Today, I want to:

find the right one.

That sounds less spectacular.

But for me, it is much more demanding.

Science should not be decoration at Green Agora

It is very easy to use science as marketing.

Find a study.

Pick out a spectacular sentence.

Formulate an effect more grandly.

Place a bottle next to it.

Done.

That is exactly what I do not want.

When a study was carried out on cells, I say:

Cell model.

If it was an animal study:

Animal model.

If a human study shows a connection:

then it is exactly this connection.

And if an EU Health Claim has specific requirements, then those requirements apply.

Science is strongest for me when we do not let it promise more than it actually knows.

My personal experiences may remain personal, nevertheless

I have had my own experiences with high-quality olive oils.

I have developed routines.

Taste changes.

Perception changes.

You learn to recognize differences that you hadn't noticed before.

All of this is real to me.

But:

My experience is my experience.

It does not automatically become a clinical study.

That is exactly why two things can be true at the same time at Green Agora:

I can be enthusiastic.

And remain scientifically cautious.

That is not a contradiction to me.

Analysis without a human remains just a number

This sentence now summarizes much of what I have learned over the years.

Analysis without a human remains just a number.

A laboratory value can be important.

But it does not know who is standing before me.

It does not know whether this person loves bitterness.

He does not know whether he is cooking for a family every day.

He does not know whether 500 ml is consumed in three weeks or six months.

He does not know whether someone is looking for an oil for pure tasting or a versatile oil for the kitchen.

And the other half is just as important:

Experience without analysis remains an observation.

Just because I perceive something, I do not automatically know its chemical cause or concentration.

For me, Green Agora lies exactly between these two poles.

Analysis and experience.

Product and person.

What my mother has to do with Green Agora today

My mother cannot read any of our articles.

She cannot come to the showroom.

She cannot taste olive oil with me.

And I cannot change the past.

That is the truth.

Green Agora cannot change that.

No bottle can.

No analysis.

No study.

But the question that remained after her death changed me.

It made me more curious.

It made me look closer.

It led me to producers.

To olive varieties.

To mills.

To sensory analysis.

To laboratory reports.

To scientific papers.

And eventually to people I sit across from today who ask me:

"Ayhan, which olive oil would you recommend to me?"

Perhaps that is exactly the connection.

Not:

Olive oil could have saved my mother.

I never want to tell that story.

But rather:

The loss of my mother taught me that I do not want to search superficially when it comes to important things.

If someone trusts me today and asks me for a recommendation, I want to take that trust seriously.

Not with a grand promise.

But with diligence.

Perhaps that is exactly part of what has remained from this story.

I cannot change the past. But I can choose the diligence with which I work today anew every single day.

Ayhan's promise | What I can give and what I cannot

I cannot promise you that a food will change your life.

I cannot prevent any disease.

I cannot provide a medical prognosis.

And I do not want to promise you anything that a bottle of olive oil is not allowed to promise.

But I can tell you how I want to work.

I will ask.

I will taste.

I will get to know the origin and the producers as much as possible.

I will not just look at available analyses, but try to interpret them correctly.

I will not automatically turn a high number into a big effect.

I will not force a bitter oil on you just because I find it interesting myself.

And if I do not know something, I would rather say:

"I don't know."

than invent a nice answer.

Because for me, trust does not arise from having an immediate answer to every question.

Sometimes it arises precisely from knowing the limits of one's own answer.

I will try to understand not only the bottle in front of me.

But also the person who takes it home later.

That is my aspiration for Green Agora.

Why Green Agora exists | My answer today

If you ask me today:

Why does Green Agora exist?

then I would not start by talking about olive oil.

I would say:

Because I eventually learned that diligence has value.

That a product has a story that one can understand.

That a number can be important without being the whole truth.

That taste is personal.

That origin must be explained.

That producers are more important than marketing terms.

And that a good advisor should sometimes not recommend the most spectacular bottle.

But the right one.

Perhaps that is why Green Agora is less of an olive oil shop today than I thought at the beginning.

For me, it is a place of comparing.

Of asking.

Of smelling.

Of tasting.

Of learning.

And of encounter.

Green Agora cannot change the past.

It cannot give my mother anything back.

And olive oil cannot give me the answer to the question of why she had to go so early.

But something else has grown from this unanswered question.

The desire to look closer.

Not to believe everything.

To ask questions.

To get to know people.

To understand food.

And to rather honestly tell someone:

"I don't know."

than to sell them a nice story.

Perhaps that is exactly a part of what my mother left behind for Green Agora, without ever having known it.

Understand the olive oil.

Understand the person.

Bring both together.

If I succeed in that, then something has truly emerged from a question that began in 2004.

That is why Green Agora exists.

Ayhan

Experience Green Agora in person

Those who do not want to get to know this world only online can visit the Green Agora olive oil showroom in Lüdenscheid by prior appointment.

There, different olive oils can be viewed together, compared sensorially, and classified according to personal taste.

Green Agora GmbH
Nottebohmstraße 13a
58511 Lüdenscheid
Germany

WhatsApp: +49 175 9009341

E-Mail: info@greenagora.de

Learn about olive oil tasting and the showroom

Read more | The technical topics behind my story

Those who want to delve into specific topics can find their own Green Agora guides for this purpose.

• How do you recognize good olive oil?
• Polyphenols in olive oil | Taste, analytical values, and EU Health Claim
• Oleocanthal in olive oil | Formation, pungency, and analytical values
• Early harvest olive oil | Understanding early harvest correctly
• Olive oil test | Correctly classifying sensory and laboratory values

Premium olive oil at Green Agora

At Green Agora, you will find different premium olive oils with various olive varieties, regions, producers, and sensory profiles.

My recommendation does not start with:

Which bottle is the most expensive?

But rather:

Which bottle fits you?

Compare premium olive oils

Technical basis | Science deliberately separated from personal history

The biographical parts of this article describe personal memories and experiences of Ayhan. Current official or scientific sources were taken into account for the technical classifications.

• World Health Organization | Breast Cancer Fact Sheet | updated July 3, 2026
• Peyrot des Gachons C et al. | Unusual pungency from extra-virgin olive oil is attributable to restricted spatial expression of the receptor of oleocanthal | Journal of Neuroscience | 2011 | PMID 21248124
• Beauchamp GK et al. | Phytochemistry: ibuprofen-like activity in extra-virgin olive oil | Nature | 2005 | PMID 16136122
• European Commission | Regulation EU No. 432/2012 | consolidated version of August 20, 2025 | Health Claim for olive oil polyphenols
• European Commission | Delegated Regulation EU 2022/2104 | first cold press and cold extraction
• Rey Giménez R, Sánchez Gimeno AC | Influence of harvest year and harvest time on composition, oil content, and stability | 2022 | PMID 35398902
• Bongiorno D et al. | Bio-phenols determination in olive oils: Recent mass spectrometry approaches | Mass Spectrometry Reviews | 2023, published online 2021 | PMID 34747510
• Interview with Atilla Totoş | Pharmacist and olive oil producer | personal professional background

Scientific results explain specific questions under specific conditions. Personal memory explains what an experience means to a person. In this article, both are deliberately not confused with each other.