The science of what we eat: The NYU math grad bringing sustainable olive oil to your kitchen (Brains Byte Back Podcast)

Erick Espinosa
Tue, 22 Apr 2025 00:55:32 +0000
Brains Byte Back

When it comes to what we eat, more of us are asking the right questions: Where did this come from? How was it made? Is this good for me? Those same questions are being asked about one staple in our kitchens that’s found its way into beauty routines and in some bedrooms— extra virgin olive oil. Curiosity is fueling a boom in this cooking oil industry, with the market projected to more than double to $2.2 billion by 2031. But with so many options, how do you know what’s actually worth drizzling on or that salad?

In this episode of Brains Byte Back, we pick the mind of Arsen Khachaturyants— he’s an NYU math graduate turned CEO of Arsenio, an organic wine and olive oil company in Tuscany. Arsen blends science with tradition while redefining what thoughtful agriculture can look like in olive oil production.

Arsen walks us through his unusual journey: starting as a mathematics and Japanese language student with a focus on chaos theory and differential equations. He was supposed to continue his studies in Japan, but the pandemic shifted his plans. He pivoted to agriculture, inspired by a desire to create something lasting.

Initially focused on wine, Arsen dove deep into education—completing top sommelier courses and working in a Michelin-starred kitchen. This hands-on training connected his mathematical mindset and culinary background, sparking his interest in the complex world of olive oil as well.

Rather than treat olive oil as an afterthought, he developed it as a standalone venture with a strategic vision. He emphasized the diversity of olive varieties and flavor profiles, approaching production like a chef or a scientist—harvesting by type, pressing separately, and using a gastronomic, varietal-specific method uncommon in traditional Italian oil-making.

Climate change has made everything harder. Droughts and extreme weather have hit European producers hard, and Arsen’s own 2024 harvest hit only 30% of its potential. Still, he’s committed to organic farming despite its risks—especially the loss of yield due to the lack of pesticides or chemical fertilizers.

When it comes to sustainability, Arsen focuses on smart practices over fancy tech. He avoids waste by mulching pruned wood instead of burning it, and encourages locals to do the same. His team uses gentle hand-harvesting methods due to Tuscany’s terrain and older trees, and he relies on a mill that incorporates cutting-edge, eco-friendly technology for pressing. Even the olive pits are repurposed for fuel.

Packaging plays a role too—he’s invested in thick, dark glass bottles that preserve the oil and are designed to be reused, inspired by whiskey aesthetics which he is also an admirer of.

Arsen offers tips on how to shop for high-quality olive oil: prioritize dark bottles, check for origin and production details, and avoid plastic or transparent containers with clear labelling. He emphasizes that quality and transparency are key—and that even in a traditional space, small thoughtful choices can lead to big improvements.

You can listen to the full episode below, or on Spotify, Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Breaker,, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Overcast, Listen Notes, PodBean, and Radio Public.

Find out more about Arsen Khachaturyants here.

Reach out to today’s host, Erick Espinosa – erick@sociable.co

TRANSCRIPT

Arsen Khachaturyants

My name is Arsen Khachaturyants, and I am a CEO of a new agricultural company based in Florence, producing wine and olive oil.

Erick Espinosa

Arsen, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Brains Byte Back. It’s great to have you on because when it comes to innovation through tech, a lot of that is actually happening in the food industry as well. So I’m talking about fresh minds with fresh perspectives that are focused on creating sustainable products specifically. And in your case, you’re doing this in what some would argue would be kind of like an old-school industry. Would you agree?

Arsen Khachaturyants

For sure. It’s old school industries and also in a way, old school country, sort of, because easily like Greece, countries with a big history and a lot of knowledge. However, in the agricultural perspective, it takes a bit longer for them to get this innovation, especially with wine, for example. Usually everything starts with France, and then it goes to Italy, Spain, and Greece. But with olive oil, of course, Italy, I think, is most innovative from the olive oil perspective.

Erick Espinosa

I think it’s a cultural thing, too, because it speaks a lot to the culture and the history of that specific country. But can we start, maybe you can take us on a little bit of a short journey describing how you ended up as the CEO of Arsenio?

Arsen Khachaturyants

Yeah, sure. It’s pretty complicated story because basically, I was studying at NYU.

I was doing pure mathematics and Japanese language. To be more specific, I was studying in theory of chaos, dynamical systems and differential equations. It was my main thing.

And I was supposed to continue studying, doing my master’s in Waseda University. I got their place there. But sadly, COVID started. I got the place in Waseda, and they told me, “Look, we can study online. You can do your (2:33) master’s online.” (2:34) And I said, “Look, I applied to Tokyo University for the sake of being there, practicing my Japanese, and also doing mathematics there.” So at that point, it was 2021, and I decided to plunge fully into agriculture.

But before that, because the company was established a bit earlier in 2019, end of 2019, it began with the fact that I was thinking, I want to do something valuable, something which I can give for generations. And at some point, because my family lives in Italy and we had a good piece of land which was not used. And I told my parents, I think I want to make a project. I want to start producing wine. And at that point, they said, yeah, it’s good, we’ll support you. And I started it. And of course, I was 20 years old. Yeah, I just turned 20. And I was thinking, OK, we need to start here.

And I never like to plunge into any topic without really understanding it. So I decided, OK, NYU is finished. At some point, I want to go back to mathematics and continue my master’s at some point, but not now. I started doing all the possible sommelier courses. I looked at the top sommelier courses. I finished WCT diploma like two years ago.

Now I’m doing master’s sommelier. I’m hopefully this year I will start with master of wine and I’m finishing my master’s in Enology and Viticulture in Bordeaux. So I said, OK, I will do that.

At the same time, we start planting the vines and we planted in 2020. And to produce the first wine, it takes three years. And after three years, you’re only going to produce like 30 percent of potential production for the wine. And I was thinking, OK, while I’m waiting, because here you just need to wait, prune, start shaping your vine. Start thinking about the winery itself, the structure. I’m thinking, OK, we’re surrounded by olives, why not produce olive oil? And that was actually, it didn’t start with olive oil, it started with wine. This is an important point.

But what I wanted to do differently, because a lot of famous companies which are producing wine in Italy, they have olive oil, most of them have in their portfolio olive oil. But I didn’t want to make olive oil as part of my portfolio. I was talking with my managers that I want to create two different financial plans, one for wine, one for olive oil, because I think olive oil deserves to have a totally separate financial plan without being like part of portfolio and just sell for the namesake.

And there I was thinking, OK, firstly, we have different varieties of olives, which is something which people don’t know because people think, OK, olive oil is olive oil, it comes from olives. There are hundreds of varieties, different flavor profiles, different ripening season and also complex things. And I also, the thing is, which I didn’t mention, I am a professional chef.

I was working in a Michelin-starred restaurant. I was taught by many chefs from different countries, different nationalities, different cuisines. And this is why how, because people think how mathematics and culinary and agriculture anyhow relates, apparently somehow relates in my case, because culinary, you’re always close to wine, like olive oil.

And this is why it was for me a natural thing to do. And with mathematics, even before I got my place at NYU, I was writing my final project for my IB and I was writing about the shape deformation, like it’s more a typological project. But it started because I was designing 3D plates for my dishes.

Erick Espinosa

You’re doing a lot of different things.

Arsen Khachaturyants

Yeah, somehow, I tried to interrelate them.

Erick Espinosa

They’re all connected.

Arsen Khachaturyants
Yeah. With mathematics, you start thinking differently because you start to divide these things into variables because I was thinking, OK, I don’t want to produce just a blend like many people do. You just harvest all the olives and you just, you know, press them, you have olive oil. Because as I mentioned, each olive has different perfect timing.

And it’s a shame when you harvest all of them, you lose a potential of each different variety. So first thing we took all our — like at that point it was like 400 trees — and we started to differentiate them. I got the person who knew because they look pretty similar, honestly. If you are not like a professional, they look pretty similar.

So you need to look at the leaves, you need to look at the olives themselves. And we differentiated all these olives into four main groups, four different varieties. And then we start our harvest.

So we harvest each variety separately, press them separately, and also created another blend just using already pressed one of the varietals, which was actually a different story. Because in Italy, usually you, as I said, harvest all of them, press — that’s all, that’s your blend. And this way it was a bit of more gastronomic approach. And I would say it’s also a lot of education were needed.

And I’m guessing that will be one of the questions — maybe questions about markets — and I can expand later about it.

Erick Espinosa

Of course. I know when it comes to Europe, you guys are very well known, obviously, for the oil, olive oil production. I found a stat here saying typically Spain produces 40 percent of the world’s olive oil, but production has dropped nearly 50 percent in recent years due to extreme drought. So when you were mentioning, I guess because you got into this kind of recently, but this is when climate change and like a lot of — and I’m seeing a lot of things come out of Spain when it comes to drought and when it comes to flooding.

You’re in Italy specifically. Like, how are you — like, what type of challenges are you facing specifically when it comes to climate change in your olive oil production?

Arsen Khachaturyants
Yeah, it’s the same. It’s challenging because, for example, like recent example — 2024 — the potential of production of 2024 reached only 30 percent.

Buy some olive oil — if you’re an importer looking for organic extra virgin olive oil from Italy, it’s basically out of stock. Of course, small producers have their olive oil, but you cannot buy in bulk anymore for this year because last year, due to drought, due to this climate change — and thank God people stopped, not stopped, but still — people use the term “global warming.” It’s very misleading, because “climate change” is a much better term. It’s not just about drought, it’s about the conditions becoming more chaotic, harder to predict and manage — you have, if it’s not rain, it’s floods; not frost, but hail.

And that’s the main problem. Because in our case, last year was not a bad harvest — but again, a small percentage. And especially when you’re going organic, it’s more difficult because we are doing only organic olive oil.

That was also my choice. When I was at NYU, I finished NYU one year early because I got all my points ahead of time, and I decided to take one extra course on climate change — using mathematics, mostly differential equations, to make some projections. And you can see that, honestly, you don’t have much of a chance with what we’re doing right now.

And of course, in my case, it’s a small step and we try, again, to educate. And of course, by ourselves, it’s impossible to change anything, but at least we do something.

And with organic — what people need to understand is why, for example, it’s more expensive. It’s because you lose yields more. You cannot preserve your potential yields as well as people who use conventional agriculture, because we cannot spray with pesticides, herbicides — and that’s a risk. But at least we know we can produce high quality. Small yield, but higher quality.

But how we combat the challenge is — with olives, unlike vines — they are very heat resistant and drought resistant. So, for example, I don’t remember in the last five years that we watered any of the olives — only when you transplant them from one place to another or you…

Plant the young olives — like, the first year you might water them if it’s too hot and there’s not much rain. But in general, they’re very hardy plants. The problem is, yes, they are very heat resistant. But why is the production dropping? Because olives themselves — since olives are a fruit — you have the stone and the pulp. And it’s about the percentage between pulp and the stone.

Of course, in the end, you will have olives. There’s no problem with that. But it’s about how much pulp you get — this overall percentage. That’s one of the reasons for the reduction in yields: there’s a huge stone and a small amount of pulp.

And when you press, you get a much lower amount of olive oil. Yeah, that’s, I would say, about Europe.

Erick Espinosa

But it sounds like what you’re doing as well is — so there’s the climate change challenge, right? Like, you’re obviously having to combat this. But at the same time, you’re also trying to insert sustainability methods into something that would technically be considered old school.

And those old-school methods worked back then when they weren’t dealing with these kinds of challenges. But you knew this going in, right? You knew these were the things — but you’re up for the challenge, or this is something that you’re looking to do.

Can you talk to us a little bit more about the techniques and the type of technology you’re using in these sustainability techniques?

Arsen Khachaturyants

Sure. The thing is, as I said, it’s an old-school industry. Of course, we try to innovate. But with olives, honestly, when you’re in the fields, there’s not much innovation.

So sustainable practices — it’s only about, for example, one of the things which we are doing. We prune every year. You have a lot of wood. And instead…which is very traditional in Italy — and very unsustainable — you burn this wood. Every autumn and during different times of the year, you can see smoke in Tuscany. And you know that people are just burning the wood after pruning. It’s not good, of course. And we understand that.

That’s why we mulch the wood. We mulch the wood and then use it for compost. That’s the idea. It’s one of the sustainable things — because you’re just reusing it. You put it in the soil, and that’s all.

And we try to help the people who live around us too. We say, “OK, you can give this wood to us — we can just mulch it and give it back to you, mulching back if you want.” Because honestly, it’s much better if we don’t burn the wood. That’s one thing.

From a harvesting perspective, there’s not much innovation. Honestly, it’s more about the human factor — understanding when to spray if mold appears or if there’s a problem like the olive fly. Usually, you spray with copper. That’s the only thing you can do. Or sometimes you use oils like lemon oil or orange oil — so they’re organic.

You might see in large-scale production, like in Spain, where there are flat surfaces and perfectly aligned olive trees, that they can use machines to go through and shake the olives. That’s only possible when the terrain is flat. But we have inclines — like 30 to 40 percent inclines. It’s impossible.

Erick Espinosa

That’s the beauty of Tuscany though — those views, right?

Arsen Khachaturyants

You have these valleys, and it’s just not possible to use machines like that. Then we have old olive trees — some up to 100 years old or more — and they’re high-pruned.
So, you can’t use machines on them. You’d need much shorter pruning for that.

So we harvest using a brazing fork. That’s the only thing because it doesn’t damage the wood, and it doesn’t damage the olives. We also use nets to catch the olives — and that’s it. The real innovation, I would say, is happening in the mills — in the pressing stage. There’s a lot of sustainability progress going on.

First, with water use — you need to clean the olives before they’re pressed. So first they’re cleaned, then cut, and then this paste goes into the pressing machine, where the oil is extracted. The company we use — because we’re still a startup and can’t yet afford our own olive mill. It’s too big of an investment, especially for our small, artisan-level production. We have a good producer of olive oil.

It’s one of their business strategies is to rent out their mills. And there, we use the latest technology. You have a choice to use the old-school methods or the newest. And usually the price range can be around 10 to 15 euros per 300 kilograms. So it’s a big difference. But we’re ready to pay more for that, because it gives us better quality and is more sustainable. Because for example, the stones — which usually aren’t used — are then cut down and this is another way of using these stones for fuel. They burn very well because they’re full of oil and then they sell the stones to some producers who use them for other purposes.

Of course, when it comes to the bottles for example, it’s another way we try to be more sustainable. We try to give them good-quality bottle which you can reuse. For example, this is our new bottle which we haven’t released yet.

Erick Espinosa

That’s a beautiful-looking bottle.

Arsen Khachaturyants

I love whiskey. I’m also a whiskey sommelier.

Erick Espinosa

You know, you’re right. It really does look like a whiskey bottle too.

Arsen Khachaturyants
This bottle is thick, and a lot of people cant say, “Look at the CO? footprint.” That’s true. But at the same time, we say you can reuse this bottle because it’s thick glass. Unlike the wine industry, we can’t just make the glass thinner. Today, a lot of wine producers try to reduce the weight of the glass, but with olive oil, sun protection is super important. The darker the glass, the better it is for preserving olive oil. That’s why we don’t reduce the weight.

However, after you use the bottle, you can reuse it—for lemonades, for example, or even as a vase for flowers, like in Ikebana. We try to promote that kind of idea.

Erick Espinosa

Very smart.

Arsen Khachaturyants

In general, olive oil production is quite sustainable. You can use old-school methods, old-school pruning. Pruning is one of the ways that is now advancing. For example, in old-school we like heavy pruning—cutting big chunks of the tree. In our case, we try to cut more often, but only small chunks of wood. That’s less stress for olives. This puts less stress on the tree, reduces the chance of infection, and therefore reduces the need for spraying.

Organic is good, but it’s not perfect. We’re trying to improve our organic agriculture by reducing the amount of copper we use. Copper is a heavy metal, and once it’s in the soil, it’s hard to remove. So we try to minimize it.

Erick Espinosa
So if it’s not organic, am I drinking copper?

Arsen Khachaturyants
Actually, no—copper sprays are used in organic farming. But they wash off easily, and there’s nothing harmful about it in small amounts. The downside is that it builds up in the soil. Over 20–30 years, that can be a problem. That’s why we try to reduce copper use. In conventional (non-organic) farming, though, you’ll find far more aggressive chemicals—things that kill everything.

Erick Espinosa
There’s definitely a shift happening. People are more health-conscious. But honestly, when I go to the store and look at all the olive oils, I don’t even know where to start. A lot of people just pick the most expensive one. What would you recommend for someone trying to choose a quality olive oil?

Arsen Khachaturyants
That’s a good question. First, look at the label. If it clearly says “Italian extra virgin olive oil” and “organic,” that’s a good start. It’s mandatory to include that info. Then, flip the bottle and look at where it was pressed. If the company isn’t based in Italy or doesn’t say where the olives were harvested, that’s a red flag. Some producers mix in olives from other countries or dilute the oil with water or other oils.

The next thing is the bottle itself. Avoid transparent bottles. UV light degrades olive oil quickly—within a couple of hours. And you don’t know how long a bottle has been sitting on the shelf. I’ve seen super expensive oils in clear bottles—that’s not a good sign. Dark glass is better. Italians usually use it, unlike some French or Greek producers who prefer transparent ones.

You can also look for oil in tin cans. Glass is best, then tin, and last is plastic. Even so-called sustainable plastic gives off a taste after a while, and it’s not truly sustainable.

Also, look for the word “monovarietal” on the label—meaning the oil is made from one type of olive. It’s harder to fake and more niche. In Tuscany, for instance, you’ll find varieties like Moraiolo, Frantoio, Leccino, or Leccio del Corno. If that’s on the label, it’s usually a good sign.

So yeah, look for origin, dark bottles, and clarity about the type of olive used.

Erick Espinosa
It’s kind of like investing in a bed—you’re going to use it every day, so you want it to be good quality.

Arsen Khachaturyants
Exactly. It’s important for your health. You use it for frying, for salads—it’s worth investing in food you consume regularly. In agriculture, you’re not just producing something; you’re feeding people. You have a direct connection to your customer, and that brings a responsibility to make sure the product you’re selling is truly good for them.

Erick Espinosa
On that note, I’m curious—what’s one olive oil trend that you live by, and one that you think is kind of ridiculous?

Arsen Khachaturyants
One trend I think is good is taking olive oil in the morning. If you don’t use it much in cooking, just have a tablespoon daily. It’s good for your health—full of polyphenols and antioxidants. There’s nothing harmful about it, unless you have a specific allergy.

Another popular trend was drinking water with vinegar to manage glucose levels. But vinegar is acidic, and on an empty stomach, not everyone can handle it.

One strange trend was Starbucks’ “Oleato” line—olive oil in coffee. Olive oil has a strong, herbaceous taste, and it’s not for everyone. Also, coffee involves high heat, which may degrade the good stuff in olive oil. I also question the quality of the oil Starbucks used. Like with matcha lattes—you often get powdered sencha, not real matcha.

I did enjoy making my own version of Oleato at home, but the one I tried in a Starbucks in Japan? Let’s just say I had some questions.

Erick Espinosa
I don’t even think they make it anymore. It was risky—especially for people who already react to coffee. Adding oil on top of that? Could be rough.

Arsen Khachaturyants
Yeah, and I doubt the oil was organic.

Erick Espinosa
Arsen, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. If someone is visiting Tuscany and wants to come to your farm, how can they reach you?

Arsen Khachaturyants
Right now, the best ways are through our website or Instagram. We’re investing a lot into Instagram, and we’re also working on a really cool new website. @arsenio.evoo

Erick Espinosa
Perfect. I’ll include the website in the show notes. Thanks again, Arsen!

Arsen Khachaturyants
Thank you very much!