My things

This was another small discovery from a day that has already produced several different stories. Today was Moldova’s National Wine Day, which this year takes place on 3–4 October and celebrates its 25th edition. I have another post about the event itself, because trying to describe the entire day through a single bottle would not make much sense. This particular story actually started a few weeks earlier. Viorica had received a bottle from one of her customers — the company behind Mi Piace — and it had been sitting at home waiting for us to open it. I had not paid very much attention to it at the time. Then, while walking around National Wine Day today, I saw the Mi Piace stand amongst all the other producers and suddenly remembered the bottle. By the time we returned home, after tasting more than enough wine during the day, curiosity finally won. I had finished the wine I was drinking and decided that this was as good an opportunity as any to find out what exactly had been wa...

Today was Moldova’s National Wine Day, an event that deserves a post of its own because there was far too much happening to compress the entire day into one story. This one is about a single bottle of wine, but perhaps even more about the people behind it. When we entered the event and started walking through the different stands, one of the first places where we stopped was Pomușoară Dulcișoară . There are many producers at an event like this, including some very large and very well-known Moldovan names, so it would have been easy simply to taste something, say thank you and move on to the next table. Instead, we stayed. The people there took the time to talk to us properly, not simply to pour wine, and the conversation immediately made the stand memorable. We talked about the wines, the winery and what they were doing, and there was the kind of relaxed personal interaction that is much easier to find with a small producer than with a large commercial operation. We eventually ...

After everything else that happened today, apparently the day still had one final story waiting for me. It had already been a long Saturday. We had started at 06:00, dealt with house matters, driven into Chișinău to inspect the renovation, wandered through the National Wine Day celebrations, eaten, drunk, talked to people, discovered new wineries, watched enormous quantities of meat rotating over charcoal, and eventually headed back towards Vita’s parents’ house. By that point I was ready for the day to become considerably less interesting. Instead, while I was driving uphill along the street towards the house, I noticed a group of teenagers running down the road. They kept looking backwards as they ran, which initially seemed slightly odd but not especially important. It took me a few moments to understand what they were looking at. A very small puppy was running after them as fast as its tiny legs could manage. The teenagers passed my car and continued down the hill. The ...

Today was Moldova’s National Wine Day. That sounds as though the day started with wine, which would have been perfectly understandable in Moldova, but reality was considerably less glamorous. Our Saturday began at 06:00, dealing with the usual collection of things that have accumulated while we are still living between houses. After that we drove into Chișinău to check the progress of the renovation. Only once all of that was out of the way could we move on to the considerably more attractive part of the programme: going into the centre of the city and surrounding ourselves with wine, food, smoke, people and the general organised chaos of one of Moldova’s biggest celebrations. The house visit was important, though, because we are finally reaching the stage where I can say that the renovation is almost finished without immediately feeling that I have tempted fate. The inside is essentially done. There are ...