ABOUT SOLIO
We wanted an olive oil that actually does something.
Founded by Elena Carrière and Nick Mulder in Berlin. Made in Apulia. Built around a single conviction: real food beats any supplement.
01 — WHERE WE ARE
Most of the olive oil in your kitchen has almost no health benefits.
Global olive oil production has tripled over the past 60 years — to 2.76 million tonnes in the 2022/23 harvest. Quality hasn't kept up. Quite the opposite.
To hit those volumes, producers cut corners everywhere. Late harvests, because ripe fruit weighs more. Blends from dozens of sources, because a single farm isn't enough. Long storage in clear plastic bottles before the oil ever reaches the shelf.
Stiftung Warentest 2025: 25 oils tested, all labelled “extra virgin”, all from well-known brands. Four were rated “good”. Eight were rated “poor” — rancid, off in taste, some with traces of mineral oil. For five years the trend has pointed in one direction.
02 — THE BENCHMARK
There is exactly one approved health claim for olive oil. Almost no oil meets it.
EU Regulation 432/2012 permits a single statement about olive oil and health: “Olive oil polyphenols contribute to the protection of blood lipids from oxidative stress.” The condition: at least 5 mg of hydroxytyrosol and its derivatives per 20 g of oil, measured by HPLC.
HPLC, not NMR. The difference isn't academic — it's regulatory. HPLC separates every polyphenol individually and measures it precisely. NMR is faster and cheaper, but often reads high because other compounds affect the signal. Brands that state polyphenol values measured by NMR instead of HPLC are, strictly speaking, making scientifically and regulatorily questionable claims under EU 432/2012.
Olive oil polyphenols contribute to the protection of blood lipids from oxidative stress.
EU Regulation No 432/2012. With a daily intake of 20 g.
03 — THE ANSWER
We went looking for a farmer who knew the answer.
Vito runs his farm in Apulia — the heel of Italy — with 10,000 Coratina trees, one of the most polyphenol-rich olives in the world. He's a chemist. His brother is a biologist. Together they optimise every step of production for polyphenols, not yield.
Early harvest, before the olives ripen — when polyphenol content is at its peak. Cold mechanical extraction, no heat, no chemicals. No blending with other oils or farms. One harvest a year, freshly bottled every month in dark glass.
OLEOCANTHAL
The research star.
Studied by science for its role in inflammatory processes. Responsible for the peppery bite at the back of your throat — if it's missing, the oil is dead.
HYDROXYTYROSOL
The neuroprotector.
Crosses the blood–brain barrier. One of the most powerful antioxidants in any known food.
OLEUROPEIN
The cardio compound.
Supports healthy blood-pressure regulation. The reason olive oil keeps turning up in longevity research.
04 — THE NUMBER
954 mg/kg.
That's the HPLC-measured total polyphenol concentration of the current Solio batch. Measured by the ChemiService laboratory in Monopoli, IOC-certified, fully documented. Single farm, single harvest.
For comparison: regular supermarket olive oil sits around 100 mg/kg. The EU health-claim threshold is 250 mg/kg. Premium brands typically reach 400 mg/kg. Solio is more than double the premium range and almost 10× the standard.
Source: IOC-certified laboratory. Polyphenols measured using HPLC methodology.
05 — THE QUESTION
What's the point of living to 150 if you're not really living?
In the Blue Zones — the five regions of the world where people reach 100 unusually often — olive oil is there every day, Mediterranean style. Not as a protocol. Not as a stack. As food. Just like movement, community, purpose and unprocessed food.
We're not a longevity brand. We don't sell optimisation. Solio is an attempt to make something ancient available again at the highest level — for people who care more about a real Sunday lunch than their next biomarker test. Long lunches. Real food. The 80/20 worth believing in.
06 — THE FOUNDERS
How we got here.
ELENA CARRIÈRE · CO-FOUNDER
I've spent half my life writing about women's health. Hormonal balance, sleep, skin, energy — the whole spectrum. And along the way I tried every trend the wellness industry produced. Powders, pills, patches, tinctures. Some of it helped. Most of it was theatre.
What started to bother me: in this world we constantly talk about the next molecule, the next stack, the next protocol — and nobody talks about food anymore. About foods that have worked for thousands of years and would still work if we didn't destroy them industrially.
Olive oil is the most obvious example. One of the best-researched foods in the world — and yet what you buy off the supermarket shelf is a shadow of what's actually possible. I started reading deeply. Polyphenols. Hydroxytyrosol. EU Regulation 432/2012. Five years of Stiftung Warentest reports. The deeper I read, the clearer it became: the oil I was looking for practically didn't exist in Germany.
So we made it ourselves. With a farmer in Apulia who understands the science. One harvest a year. Freshly bottled every month in dark glass. HPLC-tested, because nothing else counts. Solio isn't the next supplement. Solio is the olive oil I always wanted.
NICK MULDER · CO-FOUNDER
I'm an operator. At Hypofriend I've been building financial products for eight years — in the end it's always about numbers that have to add up and promises that have to be kept.
When Elena started talking about olive oil, the first thing I did was look at what the data says. PubMed: 1,645 peer-reviewed studies. PREDIMED: 7,000 participants, years of follow-up, clear results. EU 432/2012: a single approved health claim that almost no producer meets. Stiftung Warentest 2025: 25 oils tested, four of them “good”. Eight “poor”.
That picture looks the same in every market I've ever invested in or worked on: high demand, bad suppliers, complete opacity. For olive oil, concretely, it means most “premium” brands in Germany quote polyphenol numbers measured by NMR instead of HPLC. That's roughly like a bank giving you an interest-rate promise based on an estimate rather than a calculation.
Solio is our attempt to fix both: an oil that's scientifically defensible, in a market that currently doesn't deliver that. We import directly from the farmer. We test every batch. We bottle monthly instead of storing for years. We publish the COA. That isn't marketing — it's the minimum. If it had already existed, we wouldn't have built Solio.
07 — THE PROMISE
Something ancient. Done right. Every day.
Solio comes from a single farm in Apulia. One harvest a year. Freshly bottled every month. HPLC-tested in an IOC-certified laboratory. The COA for every batch is public.
We sell it in limited drops so the oil reaches you fresh — not after months in a warehouse.
