eternallycool.net

Each year, the city of Marino waits with great anticipation for the first Sunday of October, the date on which they celebrate the “Sagra dell’uva e vino” or the “Festival of grapes and wine.”  The festival  — during which wine runs liberally from a fountain in the center of town — celebrates the fact that Marino is a center of wine production, with its vineyards turning out liters of sparkling and fresh white wine each year.

The festival also commemorates the return of admiral Marcantonio Colonna to his hometown of Marino following his famous victory over the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto in October 1571.  The town sent more than 250 sailors to the battle and the sagra is celebrated every October to give thanks for their safe return.

Though the festival has been celebrated since the 1930s, its the sagra of 2008 that’s likely to go down in history.  At the kickoff of the event, Mayor Adriano Palozzi, a priest, and a crowd of locals clamored around the fountain to offer a prayer of thanks to the Virgin Mary.  Armed with  plastic glasses that would allow them to taste the Marino DOC when the fountain’s water turned to wine, they prayed and waited patiently, but nothing happened.  Despite fulfillment of all the traditional rituals, no wine emerged and the usual water continued to pour out of the fountain.

Suddenly, however, a shout of “miracolo” rang out from a house overlooking the city’s main piazza.  A woman rushed onto her balcony proclaiming that wine was flowing from her kitchen tap.

Another local woman, Anna, said:

I was in the kitchen ready to do the housework and filled up a bucket with water.

I was going to mop the floor with it but I immediately noticed a sweet smell from the tap and it was also slightly yellow - I immediately recognized that it was wine.

I called my neighbors and they turned on their taps and it was the same - the word quickly spread and everyone filled up bottles and plastic containers with the wine.

It all happened at the same time as sagra dell’uva so everyone thought it was a miracle - I don’t think that the mayor and the other officials were very happy though.

The mayor and other public officials have dismissed the idea of a miracle, claiming that the miraculous transformation of water into wine was a technological mixup rather than a theological occurrence.