La Vendemmia: the sacred art of grape pressing

Entering a winery nestled in the rolling hills of Tuscany, I was hit by the rich, fruity perfume of Chianti Classico wine. This profumo was a scent I would soon become accustomed to, and love as I encountered it every day interning during the months of the harvest. The vendemmia, or wine harvest, generally occurs from the end of August into October and, much like its delicious perfume, pours through the cypress-lined Chianti hills, running through the heart of Tuscan culture. 

In Tuscany, the culture of wine and winemaking can be seen everywhere. During the harvest months, lush green vineyards are speckled with workers collecting grapes. It is hard to stroll down a street without passing an enoteca, an advert for a wine tasting tour, or even a buchetta del vino. Unsurprising, seeing as Tuscany boasts some incredible wines, from the world-renowned Chianti Classico and Brunello di Montalcino to fragrant Vin Santo dessert wine. It can be seen on an industrial level with big players in the wine industry harvesting huge amounts of grapes for that year’s vintage, but also on a local level. Tuscans with small plots of land harvest batches of grapes each year, often with the help of the whole family - children included! I was told of the Tuscan childhood snack, or ‘merenda Toscana’, pane, vino, zucchero (literally ‘bread, wine and sugar’). This snack is made with ‘pane sciapo’ or in Tuscan ‘pane sciocco’, meaning ‘without salt’, with red wine poured on top and finally a sprinkle of sugar to sweeten. 

The roots of the Italian vendemmia trace back to Ancient Rome, with two sacred wine festivals taking place: the Vinalia Rustica and the Vinalia Urbana. The Vinalia Urbana would take place in April as a sacred rite for the Ancient Romans and an opportunity to sample the previous year’s vintage. Later in the year was the Vinalia Rustica, an auspicatio: a ceremony to pray for a good harvest and to avert stormy weather. A lamb would be sacrificed and its organs offered to the gods. However, in the early days of Ancient Rome not everyone was able to enjoy a glass, as wine was a privilege strictly reserved for men over the age of 35. Thankfully, things soon improved, and in the times of the Republic all were allowed to enjoy wine as an integral part of daily life. It is unsurprising, then, that this tradition has continued, with wine still playing an important part in Italian culture. 

Working in a winery was a step into a world in which I had limited knowledge, especially coming from England where wine is arguably a less intrinsic part of the culture. The world of wine can generally feel fairly inaccessible, however, I found that in Italy knowledge of wine and appreciation was not just reserved for a certain group of people, there was a wide understanding of what food to pair with certain wines, how it is made and their own local recommendations. The people who I worked with in the business had a genuine passion and great willingness to share their knowledge. There, wine was a part of their lives and it was clear that for them it was a cultural necessity. This was especially true if they were Tuscan or lived in Tuscany, as they had a strong link to the land and could speak at length about the surrounding landscape. People from all departments would either have previous knowledge of wine, or had gained a keen interest in the process of working there, with many colleagues embarking on sommelier courses and attending wine events. Though I wasn’t working directly on the vineyards pressing the grapes myself, I had a great opportunity to learn about the process of winemaking and its history in Italy straight from my office role. The main advice that stuck out to me, simple yet so important, was that wine should be enjoyed. It was something to savour and sip slowly, to discuss and to drink among friends and family. For Italians, the wine pairing is just as important as the food, an extra garnish which only enriches and compliments the meal or evening drink. 

Being from England and more accustomed to drinking a pint in a pub or an Aldi Albariño, even going for an aperitivo outside of work hours was no casual affair. Wine bottles would be covered in foil and sampled by everyone, each guessing which region the wine was from, before someone would triumphantly yell out which specific wine we were tasting. A rite of passage in the world of wine and evidently in Tuscan life. 

While clay amphorae are still used by some vintners today, the process of wine-making has evolved significantly with many wineries using uber modern technology. Today, tech plays a part in every step of the wine-making process, from harvesting to fermentation to bottling. 

Satellites and drones are used by some wineries to monitor the vineyards, while a robot named ‘Ted’, developed by Naïo technologies, has taken on the role of mechanical weeding as an alternative to herbicides. However, some wineries still rely on good old-fashioned manpower to press the grapes. Aside from sampling the wine - which is essential when visiting Tuscany - there are other ways to immerse yourself in the wine culture. There are many locations which allow you to get directly involved with the grape crushing… and here are a couple! 

The Castello di Velona winery in Montalcino – where you can experience being a part of the harvest in the scenic vineyards of the castle. They also offer incredible tasting experiences and masterclasses in the atmospheric setting of the medieval town. Another is Tenuta Torciana in San Gimignano - where you can get stuck in old-school style and take part in grape-treading. This is a truly immersive experience where, instead of using a wine press, you stand in the vats and stomp on the grapes with your feet! I would absolutely recommend visiting Tuscany to experience the magic of the vendemmia. Whether you decide to visit a winery or get involved with grape-treading yourself, be sure to enjoy a calice di vino!

 All images belong to the author, unless otherwise stated.

A lesson learned from backpackers: embrace chaos, and call it liminality instead!

Sunset over the confluence of the River Sava and the Danube, with the metropolis of Belgrade in the background. One of the most striking sunsets I have ever seen. The famous brutalist ‘Western gate’ is seen to the left.

It is a cliché to say that brief adventures are meaningful precisely because they’re so fleeting. The idea of “cherishing the moment” has cemented itself into the popular consciousness of many travellers, especially backpackers, who, we are told, must truly cherish every moment of their brief sojourns in the places they visit. Yet, while travelling the Balkans in the summer of 2023, I learned a slightly different lesson from my fellow backpackers. 

I was lucky enough to study backpacker tourists in the Balkans for my undergraduate thesis (insert joke about questionably serious humanities dissertations). Many of my participants were always in a rush to move on to the next destination—no sooner did they arrive that they were already plotting the next journey. One person, whom I will call Ruby, had been travelling for two years non-stop, and almost never spent more than one night in a place. She told me that she wanted to ‘tick places off the map’—a literal map that she had in her notepad. Others told me about their desire to gather stamps on passports, to cross borders, or ‘see everything.’ Another traveller whom I met in Belgrade, Gabriel, told me he had to leave the city within a few days to prevent himself from getting ‘too comfortable.’ For him, backpacking was an escapism from his home life but also from himself; he told me that he would start thinking about his own life and identity if he stopped even for a moment. Being on the move thus also meant running away from himself.

Initially, I was rather taken aback by this—maybe even a little repulsed. It felt like these travellers were incredibly out of touch and they never “lived in the moment,” to conjure up another cliché. But I soon learned (and tried to convince the anthropology department) that this ‘race through the Balkans’ meant something profound to them. They found meaning in what I referred to as “liminality,” or a state of in-betweenness. Liminality, following the anthropologist Turner (1967), means the state of heightened emotion and energy while “betwixt and between” social statuses, life-stages, or places. Many people I studied in the Balkans sought out these kinds of experiences. If seven-hour Flixbus journeys or one night hostel stays sound like your worst nightmare, think again. To these Balkan backpackers, such experiences were perfect because they took the idea of ‘escape’ to new heights. There was never any stability and that was a good thing. They ‘found themselves’ (cliché number three) on those long journeys and uncertain trajectories by embracing this momentary detachment and disconnection from cultural and social life. Of course, most of them ended up seeking out profound experiences when they arrived—but the journey was meaningful too.

View of the Bosnian countryside—from a coach. Some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen has been during these long journeys through obscure stretches of countryside.

It seems to me that our search for richness and authenticity in our travels creates a certain perfectionism, something I also experience as I constantly move between my hometown and university. In both cases, I tell myself that ‘I must find depth and meaning here.’ I’m never satisfied that I’ve made the most of an eight-week term and I worry that my home life is too devoid of social energy. While travelling, I have many of the same thoughts: ‘I spent a lot of money to be here, have I made the most of it?’ My participants deliberately eschewed that kind of thinking, letting go of considerations of permanence and attachment. Many of them also experienced chaotic home lives, and decided to embrace the liminality of their youth by finding meaning in the experience of in-betweenness. They packed their bags and decided to live ‘on the road.’ So it’s not just that fleeting experiences are delightful because they force us to cherish the ‘moment.’ Instead, maybe the point is that the utopian ‘moment’ of rich cultural experience doesn’t matter as much as we think it does.

A typical sight on both a tourist’s and local’s café table.

In 1978, Brian Eno released his famous album Music for Airports, which laid the foundation for a new aesthetic in our globalised world, the ‘generic’ of “Ambient Music.” This music, which I’m sure readers have heard at airports or other liminal travel zones, attends to the human experience of transit as an experience in and of itself, rather than merely a means to an end. It’s an ambiguous experience, but nonetheless something meaningful in its ambivalence. Transit has an aesthetic of its own and I think backpacking is all about that. In the Balkans I learned the perhaps obvious lesson that in backpacking, the most important artefact is probably the backpack itself, a symbol of freedom from the constraints of everyday reality. To embrace mobility was a crucial, albeit rather scary, step for many of my participants.

Of course, this isn’t to say that experiencing meaning, connection, and foreign cultures is undesirable. But we all already know that. Most of the people I met in the Balkans did want to understand cultural otherness and make deep connections (except for some extreme cases!). But what I think we don’t always know—indeed, what I didn’t know before the summer of 2023—is that there’s more to travel than just ‘experiencing culture.’ Being in-between is a really precious experience that we might not have access to forever, and that applies both to travel and to university life. So never mind that the Ryanair flight is three hours late, or that you budgeted so hard that you end up having twenty three hours to see all of Paris—enjoy losing yourself in the rush!

The main public bus station of Belgrade, Zeleni Venac on a summer evening.

All images belong to the author, unless otherwise stated.

The serenity of Sevilla; a city founded on the warmth of its people

Looking through the Plaza de España.

The chaos of life can be gorgeous and enticing. We are all guilty of rushing between the vibrancy of never-ending social plans, and intensity of our rewarding workloads, ending in a drastic burn-out of exhaustion. Not to mention the restraint of emotion that comes with this way of living; everything is so rushed that we are scarcely given the time of day to think about how we feel. It is becoming increasingly evident that a lifestyle like this is far from sustainable, and as we collectively seek refuge from such a frantic culture, who better is there to look to than the worldwide professionals- the residents of Seville? I was lucky enough to master the escapism of the Andalusians this summer with these very people.

Upon arrival, I was met by the sweltering heat of the Andalusian capital, along with its undeniable beauty. The gorgeous exterior of the city is most obvious in its notable sights- the Royal Alcázar, the Plaza de España and the Giralda, to name a few, - which are characterized by their Moorish and Gothic roots.

Stepping into sites like the Royal Alcazar was like entering into a conversation with Spain’s history. Finally seeing the location in which so much of the worlds, let alone Spain’s, past was shaped, was hugely emblematic. Not to mention, the striking site of the Plaza de España, and the picturesque, winding streets of the Barrio Santa Cruz (the Jewish quarter). But this wasn’t what I remember best from my trip to Seville.

No matter whether I was getting on the tram to the city centre or getting a taxi from the airport to my accommodation, the way in which Seville’s residents interact with life was unmissable.

My first stand-out experience of this was within the first few hours of arriving in Seville - sat at a small bar eating lunch, as we waited for our hotel check-in. At a first glance, the bar didn’t seem like it was anything particularly special, but once seated, its charismatic community was flagrant.

Located in the tranquil neighbourhood of San Bernardo, this bar was decorated with intricate tiles, teaching any customer that it was founded in 1958, and that it was known as ‘Peña Betica San Bernardo’. Although our wonderful waiter, who revelled in a conversation of broken Spanish and English with my parents, added to the atmosphere, it was through observing the other customers that I learnt the most.

A couple at the Bar Peña Betica San Bernardo

In front of me were a couple, exchanging words which seemed to relax one another as they leant into the serenity of breaking for lunch; not an indulgence but rather a necessity. Elsewhere, a solitary older man sat on his moped reading a novel, pausing momentarily to look up at his surroundings and the bar facing him, then once again engrossing himself in whatever material he was reading that day.

Once I had noticed them, I couldn’t stop observing the people around me, and noticing these similar characteristics of peace and contentedness.

It’s not just the peace of Sevillan residents which contributes towards their character. It’s also their ability to express and embrace emotion, whether this is in greeting one another, or in art form, such as the flamenco. Almost everywhere you go, you are greeted with an “Hola, guapa” (Hello, pretty), an affectionate Spanish term of endearment, accompanied by wholehearted smiles, and not by ulterior motives. This presents you with an inferred permission to feel comfortable with someone you met so recently, and the flamenco most certainly feels like the personification of a warm embrace with these people whom new connections have been formed with.

Whilst ambling through the calles (streets) of Seville, it is undeniable that you will be met with various flamenco encounters, whether this is dancing, singing, or a combination of both. The first of these occurred just after I had eaten the most succulent Solomillo al whisky (Andalusian pork cooked in whisky) in the Barrio Santa Cruz, which was followed by a first glance at the Plaza de España. I had only been exploring this landmark for a few moments when, suddenly, the landscape before me lit up with the dulcet, yet simultaneously impassioned tones, of the flamenco singer, and the presence of two striking dancers. I was immediately captivated by the intensity of the art and the silence befallen on the audience watching it.

Flamenco performance in the Plaza de España

The flamenco performance which still frequently repeats itself in my mind, however, was in the Museo del Baile Flamenco (Flamenco Dance Museum). Each and every performer’s personality shone through in their flourishing display. Compelling facial expressions of both joy and anguish, along with songs performed by voices heavy with sentiment, were accompanied by the intricacies of the footwork of the dance. It is hard to explain the sensation that watching such a spectacle can bring to you; I couldn’t last five minutes without tears rolling down my face.

So perhaps you will visit Seville to see its UNESCO sites, to try a new tapas, or simply to tick it off of your bucket list of travel. All of this is normal, and perfectly commonplace. However, to even consider returning back home and saying you have experienced Seville without interacting with and observing the culture of its people, would be a disgrace to the beauty and charisma of this fine city. The people are the foundations of Seville.

All images belong to the author, unless otherwise stated.