Cooperative Buildings

Cooperative Buildings

Cooperative Buildings

SW_ROU~3

Cooperatives were created in all the wine-growing villages of Samos with the establishment of the “Union” in 1934. For their accommodation, either existing building infrastructures were used, or new facilities were built that functioned mainly for secretarial support, representative elections, receiving grapes from the grape holders, subsidies and producer advance payments, etc.

These buildings were simple one-story or two-story structures with small auxiliary storage areas, most of them owned by the Union. After the removal of compulsion (2016) there was no reason to keep them and either they remain closed, or they have changed their use by giving them to voluntary groups or associations, or by renting them to private individuals.

Gallery

The wine huts

The wine huts

The wine huts

SW_ROU~3

The “huts” were simple rectangular (oblong or almost square) buildings, mainly on the ground and single-spaced. They were usually extended with auxiliary buildings, for storing harvests and housing donkeys. Above the basic rectangle, a wooden loft was formed that occupied about half of the area and was offered for overnight stay by winegrowers. Access was via a narrow wooden staircase. Often inside the hut there was also the stomping vat, built or wooden.  The buildings were made of mud, of mixed schist, dark colored stones (brownish-brown), grey (prevailing in the area of Kokkari) and white stones.
They had small doors and windows and pitched roofs. According to the testimonies of the owners of the huts that have survived, most Samian “huts” were built in the second half of the 19th century. Some small ruined huts reveal an earlier existence of buildings that refer to the 18th century. The coating of some of the huts was made with slates that abound in the area and ensured protection from the weather.

Gallery

The stomping place (linos) & the polymni

The stomping place (linos) & the polymni

The stomping place (linos) & the polymni

SW_ROU~3

Stomping places on Samos were mainly family-owned and were built in the vineyards. Since the 19th century, they were constructed manually with local stones and mud, usually on the ground floor of the huts built in each vineyard of Samos. These are “tanks” where grapes were thrown after harvest. There they were crushed by family members and barefoot workers to collect the must in the “polymni” (the “hypolenion”).

In ancient times, “stepping on grapes in a stomping place” was called “linovato” and stompers were called “linovate”. Pottery painting images show that the “linovates” were facilitated in pressing the grapes by resting on a stick or holding a rope hanging over them.

The stomping place or linos is a permanent built or portable wooden tank – cistern plastered with sand (they put grated tile, sand and lime, made mud and plastered internally the sides and the bottom, to make stomping place waterproof), which is used for pressing the grapes with bare feet and extracting the must (glefkos). The permanent stomping place was made of stone or brick and mortar and had a rectangular or square shape. They were made within the floor, mainly in a rectangular or square shape, and were about one meter high. They had a sloping base and an opening to make it easy for the must to flow out. The must ran into the polymnium, which looked like a small well dug into the earth with a “porcelain” coating. Then the must was transferred to the houses with the “dermatia”.

The harvest began early in the morning, with the first light of day. They stepped on the grapes in the afternoon and in the morning, they carried the must, in “dermatia” loaded on donkeys led to the taverns by “mule-drivers”. Those who did not have their own stomping places could use their neighbours’ or relatives’.
After the establishment of the Cooperative in 1934, stomping places were gradually abandoned.

Today very few of them are still kept in family “huts”, in various locations. They have been located in Manolates, Vourliotes and Ampelos. They date from antiquity to modern times and some of them are two-roomed, with one room for stepping on the grapes and another, the hypolenium, with the necessary drainage cavity for the must.

In some cases, farmhouses have been identified near stomping places. Their archaeological and anthropological analysis shows that during harvest period, families migrated to the vineyards to be close to the production of wine.

Gallery

Traditional stafylodohi on Samos

Traditional stafylodohi on Samos

Traditional stafylodohi on Samos

SW_ROU~3
These are stone-built tanks where, in those years, UWC Samos collected the grapes of the vine-growers of the island, who transported them with the animals to the area of stafylodohi.

Stafylodohi are raised tanks, about 3 meters high, supported on stone beams with a straight surface where the grape production was discharged. Permanent stafylodohi began to be created in all traditional wine villages of Samos, when the Union of Cooperatives was established in 1934. They were mainly made of local materials (stones and mud) with some cement mortar as a coating of the structure.

They included a ground floor section whose height was about 3 meters (to accommodate the loading and unloading vehicles), an elevated platform, a scale, tanks and an office space for recording the quantities. They were used until about the 70s and were gradually abandoned. Today, we come across stafylodohi scattered all over the island as we tour the wine-producing villages of Samos. They stand abandoned, but remain silent witnesses of another era when winemaking activity flourished on Samos.

Gallery

Pin It on Pinterest