Buildings and winemaking facilities
Stafylodohi, stomping vats, taverns and other buildings
Cooperative Buildings
Cooperatives were created in all the wine-growing villages of Samos with the establishment of the “Union” in 1934. For their accommodation, either existing building infrastructures were used, or new facilities were built that functioned mainly for secretarial support, representative elections, receiving grapes from the grape holders, subsidies and producer advance payments, etc.
The wine huts
The “huts” were simple rectangular (oblong or almost square) buildings, mainly on the ground and single-spaced. They were usually extended with auxiliary buildings, for storing harvests and housing donkeys. Above the basic rectangle, a wooden loft was formed that occupied about half of the area and was offered for overnight stay by winegrowers. Access was via a narrow wooden staircase. Often inside the hut there was also the stomping vat, built or wooden. The buildings were made of mud, of mixed schist, dark colored stones (brownish-brown), grey (prevailing in the area of Kokkari) and white stones.
The stomping place (linos) & the polymni
Stomping places on Samos were mainly family-owned and were built in the vineyards. Since the 19th century, they were constructed manually with local stones and mud, usually on the ground floor of the huts built in each vineyard of Samos. These are “tanks” where grapes were thrown after harvest. There they were crushed by family members and barefoot workers to collect the must in the “polymni” (the “hypolenion”).
Traditional stafylodohi on Samos
These are stone-built tanks where, in those years, UWC Samos collected the grapes of the vine-growers of the island, who transported them with the animals to the area of stafylodohi. Stafylodohi are raised tanks, about 3 meters high, supported on stone beams with a straight surface where the grape production was discharged. Permanent stafylodohi began to be created in all traditional wine villages of Samos, when the Union of Cooperatives was established in 1934. They were mainly made of local materials (stones and mud) with some cement mortar as a coating of the structure.
Change in the usage of cooperatives’ building on Samos
The change in the use of the Cooperatives of Samos that belonged to the “Union” is recorded as follows:
The building of Hydroussa Cooperative has been granted to the Fire Brigade for further use.
Pandrosos Cooperative: Purchased by a private individual, converted into a house.
Mesogios Cooperative: The ground floor is rented by a private individual and operates as a traditional coffee shop. The roof was granted to the Cultural Association of Mesogios and operates as a Folklore Museum.
The “Taverns”
“Taverns” were large stone wine warehouses in Kampos of Samos to serve the wine trade of the area. There, farmers sold their products to merchants and brokers during the years of the Turkish Hegemony of Samos. These are big stone buildings, mainly of the 19th century, with a height of about 6 meters and tiled roofs. The windows at the highest points of the buildings ensured ventilation conditions for better preservation of wine products.
Abandonment of stafylodohi
The old Samian wine reception systems (stafylodohi) operated successfully until the 1980s. At that time, in the context of modernizing the production of Muscat wine, the current modern delivery systems were installed in the wineries of UWC Samos.