“What bollocks” you’re saying! It’s true though, it might sound like something straight out of a Keith Floyd series, but this was no planned miracle, it all happened quite by accident in a quaint little town south of Rome in the Castelli Romani chain of wine-producing Italian towns.
Once a year the Sagra dell’ Uva – annual wine harvest is celebrated in Marino, and at the heart of the festival is the moment when almost 3000 litres of the year’s newly pressed vintage spurts forth from the Fountain of the Four Moors.
This year however citizens of Marino who crowded round the fountain, jugs and beakers in hand, were waiting in the wrong place for the town’s engineers to work their miracle and turn water into wine.
Fortuitous faucets
Whilst revellers were waiting in vain the pipes began to gurgle and instead of emerging from the fountain, the wine somehow found its way through the pipes into the fortuitous faucets of nearby homes.
Imagine the surprise of the housebound housewives, when the 2008 vintage came pouring out of the taps because water engineers had misdirected the flow into the domestic supply.
The mistake was quickly rectified, but not before many opportunistic residents had filled jugs, pans and vases with the crisp sparkling white wine.
Embarrassed mayor, Adriano Palozzi, said that this year’s miracle would “be talked about in these parts for some time to come”.
The Sagra dell’Uva at Marino dates to at least the Middle Ages, it lasts all day, with stalls, floats, bands, parades and coloured lights, with flowers and grapes draped all over town centre.
It is also a religious ceremony with a procession in which a statue of the Virgin Mary is carried through the town in thanks for the grape harvest.
I’d say she even had a little smile on her face.