La Vendemmia
This week we helped Erminia and her family harvest their grapes. This is one of the milestones of the rural year marking the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. The family has a small vineyard and we have helped with the harvest ever since we first arrived here six years ago. In the first year we had only just moved in and it felt like a great honour to be invited. Back then the event was overseen by Old Paolo, Erminia’s husband. He died two years ago and since then the responsibility of deciding when the grapes will be brought in has fallen to Young Paolo, his grandson, who lives next door to Erminia with his wife Elizabet and baby Domenica. The actual harvesting is the work of a morning for ten or twelve of us, armed with secateurs and plastic bins. The day was overcast but warm. Fortunately there has not yet been too much autumn rain and the ground was dry. The grapes are small, white and sweet and some had already begun to dry out or go mouldy, but all but th...