Kömmö (Wine)
Kömmö (Iradi, "buried") is the traditional Iradi method of making wine in large clay jars (küp) buried to the neck in the ground or set in caves, and the wine made by it. Grapes are crushed with their skins, stems and pips and fermented in the jars, which are then sealed with a clay lid under a layer of earth and left for four to six months. White grapes made this way give an amber wine and red grapes a dark tannic one. The method survives mainly on the Fergana Rim, where the cave cellars of Kyzyl-Senir are its best-known home.[1][2]
Method
The jars hold from 300 to 2,000 litres. They are made by potters of the Fergana Rim, lined inside with beeswax and buried in a cellar or a corner of the vineyard. After the harvest the crushed grapes go into the jars and are stirred twice a day with a long paddle while they ferment. When fermentation ends the jar is closed with a clay lid, sealed with clay mixed with juniper ash and covered with earth. It is opened at Easter, for a wedding or for a name day. The empty jars are scrubbed with a brush of juniper bark and washed with lime water. The skins and pips left at the bottom are distilled into the brandy sygyndy.[1]
The usual grapes are the dark red maduk, whose name is traced to the Sogdian word for wine, and the yellow sary janyl ("Janyl's yellow"), which gives the amber wine. Both are grown on high trellises in the villages of the Lower Naryn District.[2]
History
The Sogdian towns of the Chu, Talas and Fergana valleys made and traded wine, and their Christians kept the method for the wine of the liturgy. Under Muslim rule Christian villages hid their wine. During the forced conversions of the Chagatai khan Ali-Sultan (1339–42), and again after Timur's campaigns, jars were buried in vineyards with no mark above them, and in the hill country of the Fergana Rim they were carried into caves, where congregations also worshipped in secret (ırda). Church tradition holds that wine buried in this way outlasted the khans who looked for it, and that the jars were dug up only when a priest came to celebrate the Qurbana.[1]
After the firman of the Kokand khan Abd al-Rahim Biy (1727), wine could be made openly again for the church, and tradition says that Kyzyl-Senir wine was poured at the consecration of the Church of St. Janyl in 1730. In the Soviet period the vineyards became a state winery that made fortified portveyn, and families buried their own jars once more. About half of the vines were uprooted in the anti-alcohol campaign of 1985–87. The archeparchy recovered the Kyzyl-Senir caves in 1994 and has made its sacramental wine, kamra, there ever since.[1][3]
Today
Most kömmö is made by families for their own table, for weddings and for the sözchü's toasts. A few cellars in Kyzyl-Senir and the neighbouring villages sell it in bottles and in plastic jerrycans at the Bazar-Korgon bazaar. Food writers compare it with the qvevri wine of Georgia, which is made in a similar way.[2]
References
- ^ Cathedral Archives of Iyık Janyl (2014). The Vineyards of Kyzyl-Senir: A Chronicle. Iyık Janyl.
- ^ Talas Basin Agricultural Directorate (2022). Viticulture and Fruit Processing in the Lower Naryn District. Talas.
- ^ Talas State University Press (2012). The Iradi Table: Recipes and Customs of the Talas Valley. Talas.