Year after year, the townsfolk of Binissalem celebrate the grape harvest, or Sa Vermada

You could make a lot of wine out of 11 thousand tonnes of grapes. And Mallorcan bodegas do, turning last year’s crop into 6.8 million liters of red, white and rosé. But you can also have lots of fun without bottling the stuff. You can go to Binissalem, at the heart of the island’s wine-producing region, for instance. Here, at the end of September, the townsfolk raucously celebrate the annual grape harvest with Sa Vermada or Festa des Vermar, during which tens of thousands of ripe, juicy grapes are used as ammunition in a messy pitched battle –  the so-called Guerra del Raïm – in a dusty field just outside town. It’s the high point of almost two weeks of merrymaking, processions, parades, religious ceremonies, dancing, eating, drinking and more drinking.

Lots of towns like to claim that the origins of their festivals are lost in the mists of time and locals are not averse to throwing some pre-Christian pagan nonsense into their fiestas’ pedigree. But Binissalem’s wine festival, like many fiestas throughout Spain, is a recent development. Though people have undoubtedly always celebrated harvests, this festival in its current form and with all its trappings has been held only since 1965 when local writer Llorens Moyá thought the harvest was worth celebrating in style. 

Now there doesn’t seem to be a word in English for people with the arduous job of treading on grapes, but in Catalan/Mallorquí it’s trepitjador. There’s even a competition to find the best trepitjador, an excellent spectator sport – though, not surprisingly, the wine-tasting tends to be a more popular event in terms of participation. 

There are plenty more open-air lunches and dinners for those who can’t lay their hands on wine-stomper garb, the most important being the renowned fideus des vermar, a noodle dish traditionally made with the meat of the oldest sheep in the flock, which would be pampered by the shepherds for months before being permanently retired. 

Another competition sees bunches of grapes weighed in front of the church with a cash prize going to the owner of the heaviest; and the town square also hosts the derring-do feats of castellers who form tottering human towers, a tradition which dates back to 18th-century Catalonia.

Finally, the juice from the grapes is offered up to the virgin Nostra Senyora de Robines del Most Novell (Our Lady of the New Grape Juice) by the vermadors and vermadores – grape pickers, male and female, elected by the townsfolk at the end of August and who’ll hold the title till this time next year when the harvest comes back to town. 

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