| Nectar
Of The Gods |
| Wine On
Corfu |
| by Janet Darbey |
| Corfu,
Greece
The huge hornets,
bright yellow and black striped minature helicopters, buzz around the huge
black wooden vat outside the taverna. The air is thick with the smell of
ripe fruit and the flowers in the pots that surround the car park area.
The village atmosphere is one of happiness and celebration, hard work and
old traditions that go back to ancient times. It has an earthy undercurrent
of fertility rites and excitement recalled from the distant past. It is
wine making time in the little village way up in the mountains. The
same scene is being enacted in numerous villages throughout Corfu, and
Greece. |
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| The tiny
village road has been busy for the last few days, with the grape carrying
lorries bringing the different types of grape to the taverna wine makers,
and taking away the grape baskets to be refilled as quickly as possible
at the vineyards, so that no time is lost with the winemaking. If they
leave it too long the grapes will begin to rot in the baskets, so they
must be used immediately - they are picked and delivered. If it rains,
and the grapes remain on the vines, they will rot on the vines and the
ground around them. If it is too hot and sunny, and they are left too long
on the vines, they will be too sweet, and the alcohol content will be very
high.
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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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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