Spanish views from a small town

It's past the middle of September and the grapes are already ripe. People have been picking them these past couple of weeks to make their own wine at home. We could hear our neighbors under their grape arbor this past weekend, talking and laughing as they picked the grapes. Though the grapes aren't for them, since they don't make wine. A relative has taken them. The big wineries have almost finished by now, but the local families are still starting to make their wine. We don't make wine any more. My father is the only one who used to drink it, and now he can't drink more than a glass every other day. If a brother-in-law doesn't come to pick the grapes, the birds and the wasps will take care of them. Our variety doesn't make the best wine. It's called catalan , and I assume that's because after the philoxera decimated the local varieties at the begining of the twentieth century that variety was brought from Catalunya because it was resistent. We hav...