Sweet taste of success

EVERY September Manilva celebrates its winemaking tradition in a three day harvest festival, with flamenco dancers, brass bands, music and dancing into the early hours in the Plaza de la Vendimia.

The sweet moscatel grapes have been grown in the vast vineyards that surround Manilva since the 16th century and are used to make the aptly named Manilva wine, famous throughout Spain. Although vines have been grown on the sunny slopes of the town

The traditional festival that heralds the first wine of the season

for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, it is fairly recently that wine became one of the area’s main products. Winemaking became the town’s main economic activity after the Spanish Civil War because of its ideally suited climate and soil. The festival was founded in the early 1960s and has become an important part of the local calen- dar, drawing visitors from across the region to see the winemaking process.

As well as making the sweet dessert wine, the moscatel grapes are also dried on the hillsides to make the famous ‘Malaga raisins’.

The festival has even been declared of Tourist Interest by the Provincial Council of Malaga. During the celebration of the end of the grape harvest, the very first wines produced are presented with tastings handed out of the sweet wine. In the early hours of the morning, a Rocio Mass is celebrated, giving way to the procession of Our Lady of Sorrows through the village streets. This procession is accompanied by local young women dressed as traditional villagers, who pray for the fields of Manilva to be protected.

In Manilva, it is still customary to step on the grapes for hours on a square surface with a protruding edge and a slight tilt towards the centre of either side. It is through this point that the juice, or must, flows into a well-shaped tank on a lower level. Every year, a resident is honoured to be in charge of treading this fruit. The crowds gather on Calle Mar to witness the grape treading and taste the first wine of the season.