Fulbright Update:
Moldova's National Wine Day: My strictly academic experiences
As a strictly academic exercise designed to satisfy my curiosity as an amateur sociologist, I attended the National Wine Days (Ziua Nationala a Vinului) celebration last weekend in Chisinau.

The two day event featured 95 wine vendors, along with food, music, and shopping.

A ticket to the event bought you 12 wine tastings—maybe ¼ of a glass each. Of course, regulation glasses and bottles of wine were for sale as well. As an academic research project, and to fulfill my role as cultural ambassador here in Moldova, I thought the right thing to do would be to purchase a ticket (about $12).

I know nothing about wine, except that I like it dry. I made it a point to try wines from small wineries, those I haven’t heard of or tasted in the past. I liked all the samples I tried, especially the dry roses and whites.

The highlight of the event, for me at least, wasn’t even the wine—it was the terrific entertainment. Bands, singing groups, and dancers entertained the thousands present from a main stage from noon-ish until well into the evening each day. I loved the music—upbeat, traditional, fun, eminently danceable. The musicians used a variety of instruments, including violins, accordions, dulcimers, pan flutes, and so on. It was fun watching the crowd get into it, dancing with themselves, fake conducting the orchestra, and singing along. The attendees danced in large circles, holding hands and swirling rhythmically in an almost dizzying display.

While I try to be a polite, appreciative cultural ambassador here in Moldova, my politeness did not extend to dancing. Between the wine and my general ineptitude, had I “danced,” the wreckage I wrought might’ve created an international incident.

I was, however, a better cultural ambassador when it came to the food, which was quintessentially Moldovan—friptura (grilled meats) of lamb, pork, chicken, rabbit, and a small bird of some kind (quail?), served alongside lots of fresh, tasty salads. The light haze created by all this charcoal grilling occasionally drifted from the food sector over towards the main stage, to the olfactory delight of those assembled.

If you haven’t been to Moldova, the wine festival is the time to come here to learn about the culture, language, music, food, and wine of this undiscovered gem. And, it makes for an interesting sociological study for those academics in the crowd.