The day I almost died to get wine flowing from a fountain: Marino Sagra dell’Uva
Before I had resigned, before I had booked flights, before I had even actually decided I was going to do any of that, I booked an Airbnb in Marino for the Sagra dell’Uva. I read an article about food and wine festivals in Italy and it talked about a festival where wine flowed out of the town fountain! I was going.
The reality of this crazy few days was far more vivid and unique than I could have ever dreamed up. I’m so glad I got to share it with my Mum. This was just luck, the festival fell within the two weeks she had booked in Europe. I think she was slightly apprehensive about a 3 day wine festival, but it was great to share the madness with someone else. It would have been a totally different experience on my own and I think nowhere near as much fun – sometimes you really do need to be able to turn to someone next you and say “Did you just see that? What on earth is going on?”. I love this photo of Mum – it sums up the whole weekend! After being tasked with getting a glass of wine each, she returned from the bar with a litre of vino rosso in a plastic jug! It’s a perfect example of how we had no idea of what was going on all weekend, but we had a lot of fun with it!
I started to try and write about this in a sensible, chronological order, but it became clear that actually the whole weekend was a series of little moments and I should tell you all about it like that. Little stories and moments that didn’t necessarily have any connection or relationship to each other or even make sense to us. They just all added up to the Sagra dell’Uva; an experience I will never forget.
- Marino is a very old place, with tiny, cobble-stoned streets. As we drove into town, Judy (the GPS) led me down increasingly hilly and narrow streets with not much room for the little car between the buildings. Our arrival time also coincided with the chaos of the locals moving their cars out of the main part of town for the festival. To say it was a slightly manic arrival would be understating it. But our lovely Airbnb hosts were waiting for us and were kind enough to let me keep my car in their garage for the new few days, so I dumped Mum at the apartment, handed the keys to the Papa because I was done with driving in his crazy town and went to the suburbs to park. By the time I got back, 45 minutes later, Trish thought I had been kidnapped and needed a drink to calm her down! The frenzy of our arrival into town kind of set the tone for the next few days!
- My general understanding is that Italians don’t really treat alcohol like Australians do. They don’t have that binge drinking culture. They enjoy a glass or two of wine with a meal, an apperitivo, maybe a grappa at the end of a meal. The wonderful practice of always serving food at apperitivo hour supports this – alcohol is to have with food, not just to drink alone. Marino was the exception to this rule. The university age kids studying in Rome flowed into town and they went hard. Really hard. They brought their own wine in plastic Coke bottles or bought the plastic cups of the stuff available from the vendors on the street. By 4pm on the Saturday and Sunday there were some very sad and sorry young men and women stumbling around. But I didn’t see a moment of violence. Vomiting, yes, but no violence.
- Italians take their religious processions very seriously. I have no idea why there was a religious procession in a festival that was supposedly about grapes and maybe some guy returning from war many centuries ago, but I guess it was just Sunday?
- It was actually really hard to find out anything about this festival online. The website and program were in Italian, there was one Trip Advisor review which was entirely about how much of a local festival this is. It was the 93rd Sagra dell-Uva in Marino. Over the course of 3 days, where the streets were filled with literally thousands of people, we heard two other conversations in English as we passed people on the street. This is an Italian festival, for Italians. We had no idea what was happening around us for most of the weekend and it was fantastic. It required us to basically discard any plans and just wander and see what happened!
- The couple of times we found people who could speak English, they were desperate to practice! A delightful young man, 20 years old and studying languages who served us in a pizza restaurant spent more time chatting to us than he did doing anything else I think! But it probably didn’t matter because he told us the restaurant was in a stand-off situation with a group of young people inside who had settled in to watch a football match and wouldn’t leave, despite the fact they had finished their meal long ago. The police were called but they just hung out and watched the game too. The incursion was still in progress after we left. On the Monday morning we asked a man in broken Italian, “Scusi, statzione ingresso?” The stairs to the station had been blocked for the weekend and we wanted to see if they were open . “You speak English?” he asked. “Yes”. “Me too” he said with a beam. We were then engaged in conversation for 15 minutes by an ex-Romanian who had lived in the town for 20 years on a variety of topics; his disdain that nobody spoke English in the town, not even the Mayor, the history of the festival which is not just about grapes, but also the return from war by some Count or Prince centuries before, we were shown photos of him in traditional costume from the parade the day before. I think if we didn’t have a train to catch we may very well have been still talking to him at lunchtime!
- The main staples of the festival were Porchetta and Ciambello al Mosto. Porchetta is delicious roasted pork, rolled with herbs and served in panninis. Ciambello al Mosto are fresh or baked biscuits that get dipped in the mosto (or must) which is the skin, stems and seeds of the grapes as they are pressed into wine, either during or before or during the fermentation stage. The mosto was actually sold to just drink also – it was sweet and horrible!
- We ate at the restaurant which had its entrance two steps across the corridor from our front door. Every time we left or returned home we spoke with either the son, daughter, mama or papa who were working their butts off there. We couldn’t not eat there! The food was served on plastic plates, we waited an hour for our pasta, but it was hilarious and we had consumed enough wine to carry on an entire conversation with our table mates with facial expressions, hand gestures and single words of English and Italian.
- We watched the party on the terrace from our apartment windows rage on all day and night Saturday and Sunday. Thank heavens for double glazing! Mum couldn’t sleep Sunday night. Not because of the noise, but because they kept playing songs she wanted to sing along to, including the entire Grease soundtrack!
- I’ve spoken to a few Italians since about this festival and every single one of them has broken out into the Marino song. It might not be a festival known outside of Italy, but we definitely went to a famous Italian festival! Every single one of them has looked at me in total wonder and confusion that I was there, invariably asking how on earth I knew about it.
- The actual event of the wine coming through the fountain, to my vast disappointment, was not a whole weekend long thing. It was an event called Miracolo delle Fontane che danno Vino and happened only twice, at 5.30pm on the Sunday and Monday. As we were to leave Monday morning, I had one shot. The crowds on Sunday afternoon were at their peak. The parade with the representations of various points of history depicted by people in full costume (including our Romanian friend) and flag throwing had finished and people were ready for the main event. A crowd of hundreds of people gathered around the fountain at the top of the town. Mum elected to wait this particular piece of madness out and she was probably wise to take this option! It was a total frenzy. It’s been a good long while since I’ve been in a mosh pit, but imagine (or remember) all the passion and excitement of a good mosh pit before the band starts, except instead of just surging and moving with the music, the song was the signal for everyone pushing forward, like they needed to get on stage! There was a countdown, the song was sung, the surge happened and there was probably only 30 seconds where I thought I might actually die trying to get a plastic cup of terrible wine poured out of a hose attached to a fountain! I’m not prone to over-exaggeration, but scenes of football mobs and concert crowds crushed to death did pop into my head! I inched my way forward, pushing and pushing, held my cup out and got my terrible wine. The crowd parted to let me out so they could also get their terrible wine and the adrenaline kicked in. I tipped three quarters of the wine out, but it was completely worth it!
Sometimes, just every now and then, a thing is actually better in reality than you could have ever imagined. The Miracolo delle Fontane che danno Vino, my reason for wanting to attend in the first place was hugely entertaining, but the entire experience of being a part of this unique, quintessentially Italian festival was wondrous. In the truest sense of the word. Our general state of being for most of the time was total bewilderment, mixed with wonder and fun and wine and food and music and colour and a whole lot of Italians singing and dancing to Grease Lightning.
