For this entry I seriously considered leaving just this picture and the words "Grape Festival" under it, but I suppose it merits slightly more than that.
While poking around the internet for things to do close to Rome to get out of the city for a day or two I came across a website that mentioned a wine festival where a fountain flows with wine instead of water. Needless to say, I was curious. I did a little more research and found out the wine festival was held every year on the first Sunday in October in a little town called Marino, one of the hill towns in the Castelli Romani. One if the longest running wine festivals in Italy, it has been going on since 1924, with a brief hiatus during WWII when the town was heavily bombed by Allied forces.
The reason for the festival, and the fountain of wine, is to commemorate the victory of Marcantonio Colonna in the naval battle of Lepanto in 1571. The battle pitted the Papal armies against the Ottoman empire. The Papal armies' victory lead to security of Rome from the Ottomans. It was also the last major battle between fleets of rowed ships. Marcantonio returned to Marino, a stronghold of his family, with 260 of his men and celebrated with a fountain flowing with wine, hence the current tradition.
We reached the town by a very easy train from Termini, about a half hour ride for 2 euros a person. Once off the train we followed the crowds up the winding stairs that lead to the center of town. The first thing we came to was an L-shaped piazza that had a large terrace off to one side and a small palazzo in the main part. In front of the palazzo were performers waving and tossing flags in the air. They were accompanied by a military band, fitting for the occasion, although I did not find out about the military connection until after so it seemed a bit odd at the time.
Right next to the piazza was the first wine vendor we came across. After buying a large bottle of water and dumping it out we bought our first wine for the afternoon. It was a very light red Cesanese. It's low alcohol content, Domenico guessed no higher then 11%, and sweet flavor made it perfect to drink on a warm afternoon wandering through the crowds.
Here's the main piazza...
We made our way to the front of the crowd and had a good view, but these people had some of the best seats in the house.
I'm notoriously bad for taking people pictures, so here are a few I managed to snap while we were there...Erin on the left, Alice in the middle, and Cyndi on the right.
There's Domenico on the left, Clem in the middle and me on the right.
After watching the flag throwers for a little while we decided to see what else there was to see in town. We thought we were watching the main event, but that turned out to be entirely false. We turned the corner past the palazzo with the flag-throwers in front of it and found main street.
There were thousands of people and enough wine and food vendors to satisfy every last one of them. We tried two other wines throughout the course of the day, one a rather heavy Romanesco, which was quite good, but needed a large cut of meat or a rich pasta to go with it. I don't know what the last wine we tried was but it was made with sangiovese grapes and lightly bubbly, very interesting, and equally fitting for the day as the first Cesanese was. As for food, wandering around town we tried a little bit of everything. The highlight was a great porchetta (slow roasted, stuffed pork) sandwich that was still warm from its day of roasting.
Here's nice shot of us (minus the cameraman) walking back to the train when things started to wind down.
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