AYLİN ÖNEY TAN
Time to grab the grape!
Time for the grape harvest. One can ask if isn’t it too early, but the vineyard calendar seems to be constantly changing and challenging for wine producers. The grape harvest I’m talking about is what we call “sofralık” in Turkish, literally meaning “for the table,” for the grapes that are not meant to end in bottles, but to be eaten out of hand as fresh fruit. For most people in Türkiye, the ultimate fruit is always considered as grapes. People love the juicy burst of the fruit, the profound sweetness and the effortless way of munching bunches of it, all in all, grapes have a very straightforward connection with humans. When vineyards are full of ripening bunches hanging heavily from vines, it is hard to resist the urge to go and grab one. Knowing the temptation, there have been ways of protecting vineyards in this geography, sort of sets of regulations, sometimes imposed with religion or simply by tradition. The reason for that is, after when people are done eating the fresh fruit, the real purpose of the grapes is on the way, turning them into grape molasses, grape juice leather and other sweet delights, drying them for later use, the vineyards constituted an imported source of sweetness in ages were sugar cane sugar was not even heard of, beet sugar not yet invented, honey being the sole source of sweet. Only the white mulberry could compete with the grape, another fruit with high sugar content. But then there is the drink aspect, wine making and grape-distilled hard liquors have always been in the history of Anatolia. So, vineyards had to be protected from folks that have an early temptation to grab the grape, the Christian communities of the Ottoman era that tended and sustained on vineyards had a brilliant solution for that: A holy figure stepping in, precisely in the form of St. Mary.
August 14 2024
