Drinia is a village in Paphos district and belongs to the geographical territory of the vine villages of limassol –Paphos.
In the area people are mostly busy with the vines (mostly those for wine making), cereals, and plants.
The wine, the wheat and the oil were for hundred of years the basic elements of nutrition and survival of the Mediterranean people. For the residents of Drinia and generally of the wine villages, vines played a primary factor on their nutrition, habits, customs, activities and generally on their everyday life. So the life of the person who lives in the wine village was depended on the production of vines and many things in the life circle were connected with vines. Apart from this occupation there were other occupations to serve the vine farmer but at the same time to raise the family income. Such occupations that no longer exist were: basket maker,’stratouras’(packsaddle maker),’zefkalatis’(farmer who rototilled the ground with ploughshare ),wine measurer ,’kyrantzis’(blacksmith), kazantzis’,’komodromos’,’kalaetzis’,’moudouras’et.c. With these occupations, due to the prosperity that the vine cultivation brought the other occupations were also developed.
As far as nutrition is concerned we appose many foods and drinks which have wine as their main ingredient and were developed due to the need for nutrition and the women’s resourcefulness in the area that are very famous for their well house keeping.
So we mark:
The old grapes and the vines were used as combustion materials for the funnel, cooking on the fire place (‘niskia’), for the oven or the Dixie pouring.
With the vine’s leaves we can make ‘koupepia’, the xinostafila (green sour grapes) were used in the place of lemon in some foods. From grapes you can produce plums either from dry grapes or boiled in leach or soda .The plums were the most nutritious food for children and adults.
Grapes of good quality, usually the xinistaeri type were hung in the mud stones and consisted a sweet fruit during the winter months (‘kremastarkes’).The melted grapes were put in a glass pot and made ‘matsies’ a kind of jam.
From the must ‘palouzes, siousioukos, and kiofterka’ are produced, nutritional sweets which have nothing to do with the untrustworthy quality of sweets that we are eating today.
The wine, apart from drinking, can be used in cooking (‘aphelia ‘with wine et.c), in the pork meat (sausages, pork slices). With the sweet wine people can take the Holy Communion.
People are not only busy with the vines but also with agriculture. Not as much as with the vines of course but they do let opportunity go wasted. With agriculture they have another profitable income to earn. Apart from the economical advantage it is also the love of the farmer who wants to cultivate land with pride and offer to the community and generally to the Cypriot market. From the wheat, the flour cannot be absent from any house of the farmer woman. She makes bread for the whole family every week. It offers the affection and the sweet smell in the house and in the neighborhood.
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