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Each taverna has its own tradition of wine making. They will all make it their own way, with their own preferred type of grapes, or mixture of different grapes to give the rose wine, rather than the white or red. Some of the wine is referred to as black, because of the particularly dark musky grape which is used which produces the dark red, richly fruity wine. The wine comes in all combinations, black, red, white, sweet, medium sweet, dry and very dry. Retsina is also made, a dry white wine which is matured in wooden casks (Usually Oak) which gives it a particularly woody flavour. The wines on Corfu are very varied, and conoisseurs can tell you where a particular wine was made, down to details of the taverna, and in which village. Spiros, the taverna owner, is busy making the wine. He learned how to make the wine from his mother and father, who founded the taverna in 1965. His father died years ago, but his mother is still here supervising the making of the wine for the taverna and the family. It is a matter of family pride that the wine is still as good as when his father made it all those years ago. The driver of the grape lorry stacks the crates of ripe red grapes high outside the taverna, ready for Spiros to use them. He is making the red wine today, which will be medium dry table wine when it is ready to drink around christmas this year. His arms and clothes are already deeply stained with the blood red juice from the grapes he has already crushed. He is making at least two huge vats of the wine, around 20,000 litres, so he is using the electric grape crusher to crush the grapes. Few of the tavernas or wine makers tread the grapes here by foot. It takes too long to crush enough grapes to make so much wine, and you have to be more careful about hygeine these days. Most use an electric crusher if they have a lot of wine to produce, if they only have a little to produce, for the family, they use a barrel with a screw press to crush the grapes. When they are not using the barrel press for the grapes, they use it to press their own olives to make olive oil for the family use. Spiros is helped by two Albanian workers, who work hard to keep up with the grape crusher. They pass the baskets of ripe fruit up to Spiros, who is dropping them into the grape crusher. It is like a huge box, with big metal screws that turn against each other, crushing the grapes to mush. The huge wooden vat beneath them has only a little spring water in it, ready for the grape mush to drop into. The water comes from a natural spring that runs some five hundred meters below the village deep down in the limestone rock. It is good water, fresh and clear and refreshing. It is perfect for the wine making. The metal screws on the crusher suddenly stop, and the helper turns off the electricity as Spiros gets a long bamboo pole and clears the blockage from the crusher. He calls to everyone to have a quick break, and the helpers light up their cigarettes, glad of a few minutes rest. Spiros brings out some small clean glasses from the taverna, and gives everyone a glass of the juice from the first pressing of the wine grapes. It is cloudy, deep red, and extremely sweet. The wine makers believe that it is lucky for all to drink from the first pressing, and the sweet grape juice gives everyone making the wine the energy needed to get the job finished. Spiros brings out the hydrometer and measures the alcohol level from the grape juice. It is already over twelve percent alcohol, and the wine is going to be a good one this year. He shouts them all back to work, the lorry drives away to bring the first of the white grapes for the white wine that will be made tomorrow,when they have finished making the red wine. All the red grapes have now been crushed, and are part of the already fermenting mixture, with the spring water, in the first huge black wooden vat. There are three huge vats outside the tavena, one for white wine, one for the red, and one to syphon off the wine from the grape must after the first fermentation has finished. The red wine will be left to ferment for ten days, covered by a tarpaulin, until it is ready to be syphoned off to the empty vat, where it will be left to ferment again. No yeast is added, no sugar, no preservatives. All the vat contains is the must from the crushed grapes, and a little spring water. Nothing else is added, nothing else is needed. The wine ferments naturally in the hot autumn sunshine of September, and the air in the village is thick with the delicious smell of the fermenting fruit. It makes your mouth water to wander past the vats standing beside the taverna, and the villagers are already looking forward to drinking the new wine in December. It will remain in the vats until it is ready to drink. It will never be bottled, it is too special to the villagers to be kept for long. Only two sample bottles from each year are kept on a shelf in Spiro's taverna, but they will never be opened and drunk by the customers. Spiro's wine will be sold by the jug in Stamates' own special earthenware jugs, to accompany the traditional food from the taverna. It will always be sold at room temperature, whatever the weather outside. It will always be consumed with the same amount of appreciation by the locals and visitors alike, for this wine is The Nectar of the Gods. The following are Janet's previous articles for the magazine:
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