I Got You, Man: Bonding over Crushed Grapes
Sunday, September 27th, 2009
I don’t think Rush is playing in the background, but this photo, from Logroño’s San Mateo harvest festival, which takes place every year right about now, nevertheless rivals the kind of bonding that takes place in the hilarious film, “I love you, man.” Bonding kind of needs to take place when two people are charged with the stomping of the same load of grapes in such tight, knee-high quarters.
The key? Cooperation and balance.
With a few exceptions (among them a handful of Port producers, who believe that no machine could ever compare with firm but delicate instrument that is the human foot), this is not the way things are done anymore.
But, as the Wall Street Journal recently reported in a round-up of wine festivals around the world, this ceremony, an annual revisiting of the way things were done for several hundred years, up until the not so distant past, is one of the highlights of Logroño’s special celebration, which, truth be told, takes place just before the harvest kicks in with a special fury, the better to give a few days of leisure to the huge number of people in Rioja professionally tied to the vine.
