What's Actually on Our Label (and Why We Hand-Write the Harvest Date)

Most extra virgin olive oil labels are designed to be looked at once, in a store aisle, for about two seconds. Ours is designed to be read.

Here's what's actually on the bottle, and why we put it there.

It's More Than a Pretty Label

When I first had the vision for Valèvida, I worked with Rose Daniels, a dear friend, to bring it to life. She took what was in my head and translated it into a label that's more than beautiful. It tells a story — and that was the whole point.

Which is part of why, with every harvest, we hand-write the harvest date on every single bottle, for that year's harvest.

The Harvest Date Is Handwritten — On Purpose

Look closely at the bottom corner of the label and you'll notice the harvest date isn't printed. It's written by hand, on every single bottle, every single harvest.

We could print it. It would be faster, cheaper, and it would look "cleaner." We don't, because a printed date can sit on a template all year — it's a design element, not a fact. A handwritten one can't. It means someone in the room knew the actual month the olives came off the trees, because that harvest had already happened, and wrote it down. We think you should know when your oil was harvested, not just that it's extra virgin — that's part of transparency, and we believe it's something every consumer deserves to know.

The Illustration Is a Real Place, Not Stock Art

The line drawing on the label — the trees, the water, the terraced grove climbing the hillside — is the actual landscape in València, Spain, where these olives grow. We didn't choose it because groves look nice sketched. We chose it because we wanted the label to point at something real and specific, not a generic Mediterranean mood board.

"Small Batch · Early Harvest" Is a Claim, Not a Vibe

Those two words at the top of the label are doing real work. Early harvest means the olives are picked while still green, before they fully ripen — it costs more and yields less oil per tree, but it's also what keeps acidity down and polyphenols up. "Small batch" means we're not blending across regions or years to smooth out variation. On ours, both phrases describe an actual decision, not a mood.

Region, Cultivar, Product of Spain

The label states the region (València), the seal (Product of Spain), and the fill (500 ml / 16.9 fl oz) because we think you should be able to trace this extra virgin olive oil back to a place, not just a brand. This is a single-origin extra virgin olive oil from the Grossal cultivar — it isn't blended with oil from other regions or years, which means it also isn't hiding behind a blend. It tastes like this place, this year.

Why We Bother

Ours has to hold up to a closer look, because everything on it is something we could stand behind if you asked us about it directly. It's the same reason we publish lab results every harvest — acidity, pesticide screening, polyphenol counts. If you want the full checklist for reading a label like this one, we wrote one →