A town where wine gushes from an ornate fountain in the main square is the ideal place to live for many people. But a town where it pours out of the taps and into the kitchen sink is a place not very far removed from heaven.

The dream became reality for the residents of Marino, south of Rome in the Castelli Romani chain of wine-producing towns, however.

The residents thronged the steep cobbled streets to celebrate the Sagra dell’ Uva – annual wine harvest. At the heart of the festival is the moment when the year’s newly pressed vintage spurts forth from the Fountain of the Four Moors, decorated with grapes for the occasion, to a backdrop of fireworks, dancing and – not least – drinking.

This year however revellers who crowded round the fountain, jugs and beakers in hand, waited in vain for the town’s engineers to work their miracle and, by dint of their creative plumbing somewhere below the streets, turn water into wine.

Ten minutes went by as investigations were carried out and, at last, the pipes began to gurgle. Instead of emerging from the fountain, however, the wine surged through the pipes into nearby homes.

Housewives doing the washing up or boiling water for the pasta suddenly noticed a strange smell of alcohol, residents said.

Adriano Palozzi, the embarrassed Mayor of Marino, said that water engineers had inadvertently misdirected the flow of wine into the domestic supply.

The mistake was spotted quickly and reversed, but not before many quick-witted residents had the presence of mind to fill jugs, pans and any other receptacles that came to hand.

The mayor admitted that this year’s miracle would “be talked about in these parts for some time to come”.

The Castelli Romani area has been producing straw-coloured white wine since Roman times. The wine – known generically as Frascati after the best-known of the Castelli towns – is made from trebbiano and malvasia grapes and is the staple table wine of Rome’s trattorias, often served in a jug.

Once a year 3,000 litres of fresh, slightly effervescent white wine is served through the Fountain of the Four Moors, which was erected in the 17th century to commemorate the 1571 naval victory over the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto, in which Prince Marcantonio Colonna, lord of the manor at Marino, played a leading role as captain of the papal fleet.

Commenting on the wine miracle, Il Messaggero, the Roman daily, said that the events would have surprised even Leone Ciprelli, the local poet who revived the tradition of the wine festival in the 1920s.

Not all householders were thrilled, however: one woman said that she had been cleaning the floor at the time and as she refilled her bucket, “I noticed the smell of alcohol. Wine is fine for drinking, but not for cleaning.”

The Sagra dell’Uva at Marino dates to at least the Middle Ages, although the first recorded festival took place two years after Lepanto, in 1573. It lasts all day, with stalls, floats, bands, parades and coloured lights, as well as flowers and grapes draped over everything.

It is also a religious ceremony with a procession in which a statue of the Virgin Mary, the Madonna del Rosario, is carried through the town in thanks for the grape harvest.

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