The season for making wine, that is… Though Moldova occupies 0.2% of the former Soviet Union’s land area, at one point it produced 13% of the USSR’s wine. To say Moldovan’s love their wine would be a gross understatement. Virtually every house here has a sizable garden and most of those include grapevines. Last week seemed to be the harvest time when the grapes were picked and crushed to being making the vino. Sadly, I was busy on the weekend and couldn’t help out (but there’s always next year… and the year after that!) I did, however, get some pictures and thought you might be interested in how wine is made the old fashioned way.
First you pick the grapes and drop them in a big bowl (pictured below). Then you squash the grapes and basically let it sit for a few days. Apparently the skin of the grape is what gives the wine its flavor, so you want the juice to marinate in the skins for a little while. Then you transfer the wine to a large holding tank that most families seem to have in their basements where you add sugar to taste. Then let it sit, or bottle it in old plastic bottles and drink over the rest of the year. Pretty simple, really.
To celebrate the occasion, there were festivals everywhere. I went into the capital city, Chisinau on Saturday to soak in the occasion. On Sunday my hometown, Ialoveni, had its own festival at which I was asked to perform what has become my pay-dirt song, “Hotel California,” and then play some blues with my harmonica-playing fellow PCV, Adam. As you can see we both got flowers, which (I’m pretty sure) means they liked our music.
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