One of the things I love about the northern suburbs is the Greek / Italian influence. Maybe not so much in a brown-brick-home-with-white- lions way, but in a cultural / practical vegie/fruit garden way. I like to kid myself that my area is one of the few remaining strongholds for the 1950’s European migrants who replicated their homelands to moderate ridicule in the inner north.
One such sign that traditions still run strong are the yearly appearance of side-of-the-road wine-grape sales. With good wine ridiculously cheap in this country, these cartons of small red and white grapes can surely only appeal to the septuagenarians who ENJOY THE PROCESS, and their long-suffering, compliant partners. As a kid we used to get involved in making wine at the house across the street, but my participation ended then. And I never got to drink the stuff.
I’ve seen three such sites in Thornbury / Preston in recent weeks; the others on the back of trucks parked in vacant lots “South Australian Wine Grapes” ( long way to drive them for not much return), and I harbour a wish to magically get invited back to someone’s house and do some stomping and tasting of my own. There’s something primitive and satisfying about direct from the grower sales – sanitised supermarkets have all but made that extinct nowdays.
