Italy Post #13

Dear Readers,
I have one word for you - VENDEMIA! No, its not something violent or even remotely painful. Unless you get stung by a bee. A vendemia is the Italian grape harvest, where for one day people get together and go out into the vines to cut off the grapes to make wine. Its a festival in a sense, but more people take it as a great tradition that celebrates the end of a good year.

So, Saturday we woke up very early for a Saturday and took the train out to a little area called Volpara (or "little fox"). Albert and Inga (our lovely, very Dutch wine-makers) met us at the train station and wisked us off to their vineyard. Actually, only 5 of us got to ride in the car (me included because of my legs), but the walk for the rest wasn't very far. The vineyard was situated on the peak of a small hill that looked on to the valley; Inga's erratic driving took us up the hill with a few jolts and a lot of swearing, which I thought was hilarious. But finally we reached the top, which gave a glorious view of the valley. Their house reminded me of a fairytale cottage, it was small and compact. Very cute. They took some time to tell us what grapes to pick, how to cut the stems, and encouraged us to have as many grapes as we wanted. I definitely took that idea to the max, eating all of the grapes I wanted but I ended up getting soooo sick of them! Each bunch that didn't look perfect or that was smaller than the rest needed to be taste-tested to see if the grapes were sour; I tested almost each bunch that I picked. That adds up to a lot of grapes! These grapes were also smaller and more concentrated in flavor and most had 3 or 4 seeds in them.

Not the best for eating.

All in all though, it was a wonderful day filled with eating, laughter, grapes and seeds, and bees. Lots of bees. Plus the satisfaction of having picked hundreds of grapes off of a vine that would eventually go into a high-quality wine that people would eventually drink. How cool is that?!