Bulgarians celebrate beginning of grape harvest

Local women prepare grapes to show the process of making wine during a traditional ceremony celebrating the grape-harvesting in the southeast village of Nedialsko, Bulgaria

Bulgarian winegrowers, along with their relatives and guests, celebrated the beginning of grape harvest in vineyards near the village of Nedialsko, 350 km southeast of the country’s capital Sofia on Sunday.

Women in the village dressed in folk costumes and welcomed the guests by serving them ritual bread, honey and salt. This is a tradition from the ancient Thracians living in this region, who were known as one of the first winegrowers in Europe.
 The ritual dances began after guests were adorned with vine wreath. Singing and dancing women emptied baskets of grapes into a large oak vat, and showed ritual grape harvest.
Then came several men carrying small barrels and danced around them, the two groups joined and sang and danced together.
The culmination of this ritual began when two girls stepped on a pile of vine leaves, took off their shoes, and had their feet washed by some older women. The men grabbed the girls and put them into the oak vat.

The girls crushed grapes inside with their feet; and were lifted again and put back on vine leaves.
The celebration continued with folk songs, dances and banquet.

The vineyards where this tradition is kept alive are owned by the company called “Panda Invest”. They own 115 hectares land – just over one-thousandth of the total vineyards in Bulgaria.
Ivailo Pandov, the Manager of Panda Invest, told Xinhua that he expected a harvest of 1,000 tons of the different grape varieties planted here in his four-year-old vineyard, among them are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc. These grapes are expected to produce some 500,000 liters of wine.
Two characters of the vineyards attracted Pandov to settle his company here.
One of them is the historical reason as one of the oldest defensive ramparts is only three km away from his vineyard. It is called a ditch “Erkesiya” and built between Byzantium and Bulgaria.
The other reason was linked to the soil and the climate. His colleagues have made over 200 studies of the soil groundwater in the area to find the best location. And the sunlight is also a plus for this area as it is needed to make grapes sweeter, and for the wine – to become more aromatic, Pandov said.

Xinhua