Dalmatian Cooking

Berba: The Grape Harvest

Back in mid-September, I had the pleasure of helping with the grape harvest and winemaking in the village of Marina. The grapes belonged belonged to Ljubo, one of the village’s most prolific and respected winemakers, and he had quite an operation in motion. While the grapes were being picked and bagged in the field, they were loaded into the car pictured above and hauled to Konoba Marina, the tavern in the middle of town.

The word konoba means “cellar,” in Dalmatian dialect, and since many small, family-owned taverns actually operate from within wine cellars, the term is used also to refer to such casual dining and drinking establishments. During the grape harvest, when tourist business has all but ceased completely, a local konoba will often revert to its original purpose: making wine!

I’m not certain how many tons of Babić grapes we took turns crushing by hand that day, but the end result would be nearly 1000 liters of wine. Once the fruit was crushed, we transported the mash to a giant vat for fermentation. One of our helpers, Antonija, was kind enough to let me photograph her next to the vat to help illustrate its size for you.

And Robert, proprietor of Konoba Marina, was kind enough to prepare a hearty lunch for the workers that day: a sumptuous roast of veal and turkey with onions and root vegetables under the peka.

• Share this!
  
  • Subscribe
  • Blinklist
  • Bloglines
  • Blogmarks
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Furl
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati