Rose Bechara Perini and her "green gold". (Credit: DR)
Rose Bechara Perini collects gold medals. Founder of Darmmess, a small social enterprise that has been producing extra virgin olive oil since 2019 in her picturesque village of Deir Mimas in the Marjayoun district, she has won two medals at the 2022 and 2023 editions of the New York International Olive Oil Competition (NYIOOC) and another at the EVO-IOOC Italy International Olive Oil Contest 2023, which celebrate the world's best extra virgin olive oils each year, making the winners industry benchmarks.
In early February, she added a fourth medal to her record at the 2026 edition of the NYIOOC. This recognition is all the more remarkable as it crowns a journey marked by hardships, especially since Oct. 7 and the ensuing war in Lebanon. Beyond the medals, this recognition also tells the story of the resilience of small farmers in southern Lebanon.
"The harvest took place under constant threat of war," recounts Rose Bechara Perini. "Nothing was simple, nothing went as usual. Since 2019, we have invested enormous time and energy into our project, but we lost everything — equipment and crops — when Israel bombed our facilities."
In 2023, the harvest was so meager that she lost her sales spaces and international distribution channels. In 2024, despite rigorous agricultural work, the orchards' upkeep, significant investments in time and resources, Israeli airstrikes and the ground invasion in the border area prevented Rose Bechara Perini and her team from producing at the last moment.
More tragically: as a precaution, she had moved her machines (grinders, hydraulic presses, stainless steel decanters, and filters) from Deir Mimas to Zrarieh (Saida), to work far from the border. However, "all our equipment was bombed and completely destroyed by an Israeli missile."
However in 2025, Rose Bechara Perini managed to harvest a small quantity of olives in Deir Mimas. Despite extremely difficult conditions and a severe lack of machinery — except for some equipment provided by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), others borrowed or rented — she launched her new production sites that same year in Ibl al-Saqi (Marjayoun) and Kawkaba (Nabatieh).
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