Keeper of a living Roman winery
Carolina Pateman Ivars
Business
Maserof · Xaló, Sierra de Bernia · Film: By Candlelight
Season
Season 1, Costa Blanca
Pillar
The Makers
Location
Sierra Bernia, Costa Blanca
At Maserof, wine is still made by foot and candlelight. There has never been electricity here, yet the food prepared on fire is an amazing experience.
The old house stands above Xaló, on the mountain road towards the Sierra de Bernia, among old vines and almond trees. On a clear day you can see Montgó in the distance. Under the farmhouse lies an Islamic layer, and under that a Roman one. Every September Carolina treads the grapes by foot into a Roman stone basin, by candlelight, on the spot where wine was made two thousand years ago.
Her father, Peter Pateman, was an Englishman who came to Spain as a BBC cameraman and fell in love with a woman from Dénia. In the early 1970s he bought the ruin and spent about fifteen years rebuilding it with his own hands. He filled it with old beams and farm tools that Spanish families were throwing away. He died in 2010, and Carolina took it on.
She is still rebuilding it, and she says so openly. She keeps the terraces farmed and the old walls standing, and year by year a family ruin is turning back into a living place. In this valley abandoned terraces fall apart and fill with scrub. Hers stay green.
On Saturdays she cooks six courses over two open fires and a wood oven. Guests eat by candlelight at tables around four hundred years old. At some point in the afternoon she usually starts to sing.
Without electricity nothing is quick. Every job takes as long as it really takes, and Carolina has chosen to live at that pace.
What her father left her, and who will carry Maserof after her, is a story she tells in her own words in the film. Come in September and listen to feet on grapes, with no engine anywhere.
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Summary
Carolina Pateman Ivars keeps a living Roman winery on Sierra Bernia, Alicante, Spain. At Maserof she maintains the Roman villa winery her father saved from ruin. There is no electricity; the kitchen cooks over fire and wood, and each September the grapes are trodden by foot, by candlelight, as the Romans did on this same ground. Nothing here has been reconstructed for visitors. It is a place brought back to life through practices that still belong to this landscape.
Key Facts
- Business
- Maserof · Xaló, Sierra de Bernia · Film: By Candlelight
- Role
- Keeper of a living Roman winery
- Location
- Sierra Bernia, Costa Blanca
- Pillar
- The Makers
- Produces
- Wine (traditional method)
- Protects
- A living Roman-era winemaking tradition
- Practice
- No electricity; foot-treading by candlelight; cooking over fire and wood
- Working since
- Roman villa winery, saved by her father
- Recognition
- Living Roman winery / museum
- SDG touchpoints
- 15 · 11 · 4 · 12
- Episode
- Episode 07 · By Candlelight