The Mercy Corps Blog

Blog Post Posted June 22, 2009, 6:42 pm by Roger Burks

The multiplier effect of wine

I have to admit, one of my favorite field visits involved moderate intoxication, plates of sausage and gales of hearty laughter.

But was all in the name of work: the wine that’d gone to my head was crafted by a farmer’s association that Mercy Corps was helping in southern Serbia. And that association — named Zupa, which means “fertile valley” in Serbo-Croatian — was instrumental in bringing organic agriculture, tourism and jobs to an extremely poor part of the country.

It was truly wine that one could feel good about drinking.

Senior Writer Roger Burks (second from right) with members of the Zupa winemakers association near Aleksandrovac, vineyards and a traditional village in the background. Photo: Mercy Corps Serbia

Over the course of that day, which included visits to several farms around the town of Aleksandrovac, I met the majority of the farmer's association’s 117 hard-working members. The group had received a $30,000 grant of agricultural equipment from Mercy Corps, and matched that grant with capital investments of cropland, labor and fruit seedlings. Besides wine grapes, they were growing organic raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, plums and cherries. Small local factories bought many of those fruits, transforming them into jams and jellies that were sold across Europe.

The farms around Aleksandrovac were some of the first places that I began to consider the multiplier effect that Mercy Corps programs can have on an area. Here, a relatively small grant — just $256 per farmer — was not only shoring up the livelihoods of the association’s farming families, but also providing jobs for workers in the local factories that processed the fruit into value-added products. And those products were being sold in a variety of stores, some far away from this sleepy hamlet.

Not only that, but the quality of the agricultural products — artisan wine, organic fruit and cured meats — had begun to attract tourists from across Serbia. This boosted the flagging economies of towns like Aleksandrovac, infusing much-needed money into once-failing local hotels and shops.

But that’s not all: Mercy Corps' grant was also helping resurrect tradition.

According to one of the farmers —a towering, burly man named Milutin Minic — Serbian winemaking culture goes back 2,000 years. The ancestors of today’s families had even taught the Romans a thing or two about what goes into a good glass of wine. This area had been particularly famous for growing two varieties of grape that were seldom seen elsewhere in Europe: Prokupac, from which a deep-ruby wine is made and Tamjanika, which is pressed into a sweet, straw-colored wine.

Senior Writer Roger Burks (left) stands with master vintner Milutin Minic in his wine cellar near Aleksandrovac, Serbia, huge wine barrels lining the walls. Photo: Mercy Corps Serbia

These grapes, and their accompanying traditions, almost died out under the reign of Josip Broz Tito, who ruled Yugoslavia for nearly 30 years. Ancient varieties were forcibly pushed aside in favor of easily cultivated, mass-market grapes for the state-run economy. However, some farmers secretly kept these varieties and traditions alive: Minic’s father was one of them, covertly propagating Tamjanika seedlings in a greenhouse during those decades.

Those precious, illicit seedlings helped regrow a way of life around Aleksandrovac. When I visited, Minic was extremely proud to show us his most prized possession: a giant still with the mechanical beauty and intricacy of a cathedral pipe organ. As he swung open the doors of the shed where he keeps it, half a dozen farmers gasped in reverence and awe.

“Do you know how the Serbian word for ‘still’ literally translates into English?” Minic asked me. “A machine for fun and happiness!”

I was certainly happy to sample some of the Tamjanika grape brandy that Minic’s machine turned out. And, as I left that day, he presented me with three bottles of his best wine and a sausage for the road.

I drank one of those bottles a couple of months later in Portland, with my wife for our eighth anniversary.

Although Mercy Corps’ program in Serbia closed in 2007 — after six remarkable years helping families heal a fragile, post-conflict economy — I often think about that carefree and fascinating afternoon among hard-working farmers in Aleksandrovac’s fertile valley. Wine is truly good for the heart.