Vinyards and other observations about land, wine and spirits

During our last trip, we learned a lot of basics about Greek life that we have chosen not to repeat (driving, local/house wine, grocery stores, etc.).  The basics.  One thing we had suspected but had not been able to confirm was land usage.  I know that sounds a little vague.  Basically, as we were driving through all the smaller towns and villages, we could easily see that there would be a house on what might be called a plot of land, and then adjacent to that house, there would be another plot of land the same size as for the house that was being used for farming or some nominal livestock (chickens mostly--the goatherds are huge).  When we stayed in Dodona, we learned some more from a couple of passing comments about how the eggs were fresh from one neighbor's chickens or the vegetables were grown in another neighbor's garden.  We began to sense that farming was a necessary communal activity in some places and that everyone owned with a house, a plot of land nearby where they were expected to farm.  Again, the goats and sheep are something different and they sort of roam through the streets and sometimes the highways and the archaeological sites...

This time, when we stayed with a family in Aiginios in northern Greece in their farmhouse, we got to ask a lot of questions.  Their farmhouse, and now I am just speaking on the house itself, was on a huge plot of land--at least 3 acres--and something was deliberately growing on all the slopes and hills and flat spaces that weren't the driveway and the house.  But about 1 km away, there was another large plot of land that also "belonged" to the house where this family planted their 60+ rows of vines, olive groves, and a lot of oregano.  When the family bought the house, this land was also necessarily part of the purchase.

Vineyard extends to the dirt road in the middle of the picture before trees.

Same.  We don't know what was being planted in the adjacent fields. 

This is also the only day that both Randall's and my iPhone ran out of battery owing to an unplanned and long side trip over which we had no control, so these are the only photographs of their land.  We will note that from these vines, the family derives over 5 tons of wine (I still find it amusing that wine is measured in weight, even at the restaurant level), which he has fermenting in his basement, and he also makes dozens of cases of tsipouro of both anise and non-anise flavors, as well as a beautiful cognac, each year!  The family professes to sell the wine, but I think it is more of in-kind trading with neighbors.  At least, I couldn't buy it

On commercial wineries, the land ownership schema is more like what we see in California, or from our experience in South Africa, where there is a central house surrounded by beautiful vineyards as far as the eye can see. This is the Babatzimopoulos Estate:

A different building also on the vineyard, but it gave us a lovely excuse to walk between the vines.

As this is an organic winery, they don't weed.

And just for amusement, they also don't seem to care about what the birds do:

House marlin nests.

What's amusing about these two very different wineries is that they both produce the same range of wines and spirits!  Tsipouro is all the rage with commercial wineries now as a secondary process on the grapes, but which had only been produced by the local winemakers/families.  And ouzo is disdained as alcohol solely produced by a chemical process.  Only the tourists drink ouzo.

Babatzimopoulos is located in Ossa, outside Thessaloniki in northern Greece.  Lafanzanis, another winery we visited in Nemea is also now making spirits.  We toured the Lafanzanis production facilities the first time, and didn't think to ask to see their spirits' production.  Here's Babatzimopoulos' still:

And their wine production facility, just for further amusement:

Each of those steel tanks hold 10 tons, and there were 8 more in an adjacent room.  Each of the crates had 3 layers of bottles--est. one gross bottles of wine.  

We thought it would be rude to take pictures of our host family's basement operation, but it was not insignificant.