Our story
A good ingredient, left alone.
How it began
The point of olive oil
People have been making olive oil for thousands of years, and the principle remains remarkably simple: to draw oil from the olive.
Somewhere along the way, a rather uncomplicated ingredient became complicated. The ingredient became a product. Olive oil became about provenance and tasting notes, awards and origins; about bottles, regions and the idea of luxury. These things have their place, of course, but they can rather easily distract from the point.
Olive oil was made to cook with, to dress leaves, to spoon over warm vegetables, to preserve what was abundant and to carry flavour. It earned its place in the kitchen because it was useful, generous and uncomplicated.
Good cooking is much the same. It is rarely about how much one can do to an ingredient, but knowing when enough has been done. A warm potato, some salt and good olive oil can be a perfectly serious thing to eat. Leaves from the garden ought still to taste of leaves.
Good olive oil should help good ingredients taste more completely of themselves.
As a chef, that has always mattered to me. Yet standing before shelves of dark green bottles, I found it remarkably difficult to tell which oils had been made with real care and which were simply very good at looking the part.
That never sat quite right.
“Set the table first. Everything else follows.”
If olives have been grown with care, picked at the right moment and handled properly, good olive oil ought to be easier to recognise.
And if what is inside the bottle deserves such consideration, we thought the bottle ought to reflect it.
So we made one that does.
Not to reinvent olive oil or make it more precious. Simply to give good oil its proper place, and then use it.
That is where Draw begins.
Draw is what happens when a good ingredient is allowed to remain one.
Why two oils?
One does the work. The other makes an entrance. Both are made with the same seriousness. That’s why we made two.
Because they’re asked to do different things.
The cooking oil is the one you reach for every day. Fry an egg, roast a chicken, start a sauce, bake a cake.
It knows when to stand back.
It should have depth and substance, but also the good manners to know when to stand back. Its job is not to dominate supper, but to coax more flavour from what is already there.
The plate wants flamboyance.
The finishing oil has no such obligation to behave. It arrives at the end, rather flamboyantly, when the cooking is done and there is nowhere left to hide.
This is where it makes itself known.
Over a ripe tomato, a piece of fish, warm vegetables or a slice of good bread. Vivid, green, peppery and fragrant, with that lovely little catch at the back of the throat.
Why squeeze?
Because it makes sense.
- 01Chefs have kept oils in squeeze bottles for decades. Not because they’re fashionable, but because they work. They’re practical, precise and belong naturally in a working kitchen.
- 02Exceptional olive oil is there to be used. There’s no virtue in keeping it untouched at the back of a cupboard. Put it by the stove. Cook with it. Dress a tomato with it. Pass it around the table. When it’s finished, open another.
- 03The oil is something we take enormously seriously. The bottle simply makes sure you use it.