6,000 years ago in a valley in southern Crete bordering the Libyan Sea, the Minoans of the Messara Plain developed writing, painted colorful frescos, and made magical bronze figurines.

The story of the Minoans is largely a mystery. But we do know that they were the first to harvest olives from ancient groves and press them into a verdant liquid known as olive oil.

They deemed it magical and precious, trading it with the Egyptians for alabaster, ivory, and gold.

Their writings speak of great wealth, but whether it funded a king, an aristocracy, or served as offerings to the Oracle, is unknown. The Minoan script remains undeciphered. The names of their gods and feasts are lost to time.

What has endured are their olive groves and the stone remains of their oil presses. The oldest trees on the Messara are over 4,000 years old and were tended to by the Minoans themselves. 

Harvested from branches that have held the weight of time, every drop of OMEN is a promise that the old ways, the true ways, still have power.