Hey, hey, hey! after months of silence on the blog front I've finally found a free minute to sit down and post something. I know, I know all my fans will be ecstatic! er...wait...what fans? Anywho, here's a little bit about the Fete des Vendanges (the Harvest Festival) held in Russin, Switzerland that we attend this weekend. I'd heard of this festival before, but had never managed to get there. Then when I was looking up different wine festivals, in order to tempt my sister and brother-in-law to come visit next September I stumbled upon it again- and we actually made it there!
we went with some friends who had never been either. We took a rather long way to get there
since we missed the road we were supposed to turn on (thanks mapman!) Eventually, we got to just outside the town and discovered that the road was blocked. We parked at a church and kept our fingers crossed no one would care and started walking. We heard a band and followed the music. The road started winding up the hillside and we all sighed when we realized we'd have to trek all the way to the top to get to the festival. We kept telling ourselves it was just good exercise to prepare us for all the yummy food we'd get at the festival. We passed vineyards full of lovely grapes, hanging there just beckoning for us to pick them. Not really the best photo...but what can you expect I wanted to get to the food and wine!Russin, the town where the festival was held, was packed with people. Kids with balloons, parents with bottles of wine, or glasses of Mout.
Sadly, we missed the 22 Yodelers who had performed that morning, but we were in time to catch the tail end of a parade with floats. My favorite was the float full of full-grown Smurfs (or schtroumpfs as they are known in French) and a giant Schtroumpf house! Loved it. It made me laugh when the people covered in blue make-up saw a friend and
would jump off the float and give the obligatory 3 kisses (les bises) leaving their friends faces smudged with blue! OK, so we really only saw 2 floats, but we followed the smurfs along and they led us to one of the best parts of the festival. A big flat-bed filled with crates of different varieties of grapes there for the taking. We each grabbed a bunch of grapes and chowed down.
Oh they were so yummy! It's amazing how sweet some of them are considering the wine that 
they produce. Here's a photo of the Doc trying to decide which type of grape he should grab a bunch of. He went down the whole line sampling every single type until he found the one he wanted to carry around with him. My choice was the Syrah. Not only do I like the wine, I also like the Syrah grapes!Also in the same place was the famous Mout. The very first pressing of
the grapes with absolutely NOTHING added to it. Just pure grape juice. No alcohol, no sugar. It was interesting. Nothing like what we would think of as grape juice and nothing like wine. It had a bit of an aftertaste and was quite sweet, but not too bad. The hubbster liked it quite a bit - then again, it was sweet so of course he liked it. hee, hee. We around through the crowds exploring the festival. We watched some dancers all decked out in traditional garb dancing near a giant milk can.
I don't know if you can really see the dancers in the photo amongst the crowd. They had green hats trimmed in red on.
there were also your typical fair games and rides for the kiddies. One that we particularly liked and debated whether is would be allowed in the US or UK these days (such litigious societies), was this sort of swing. The kids would stand up in the center of it and bend their legs to make it swing higher and higher. It was started off by some guy pushing them, of course. It was great. I SO wanted to do it. Sadly, I was too old and too big for them. Besides,
I'd rather throw my money away on food and drink rather than purchasing over priced ride tickets, know what I mean?Anyways, it was good fun. we had some good food - Tartiflette - so we didn't really branch out there, since we know we love Tartiflette. Ah, it's getting to be good, cool autumnal weather. Perfect for warm comfort foods like Tartiflette, fondue, and all the other cheese heavy Swiss/French dishes that are so common to this area.
Well goodness, this post has taken me ages. Now I remember why I hadn't done one in some time. If I don't get a move on we won't eat dinner till 10pm! Later gators.
