Nemea - wine and ancient ruins

Nemea is a large grape growing and wine making area a couple of hours from Poros.  It is, naturally, associated with myth and legend and has ancient ruins that are worth visiting.  It was here that Hercules overcame the Nemean lion, one of the 'twelve labours of Hercules'.  The ancient stadium held the Pan-Hellenic games every two years from 573 to 271BC.  In recent years the stadium has been excavated and these games have been revived, taking place every four years.  The last games were held in June 2016.   The games consist of races in the ancient stadium and anyone can compete, the very old, the young and the fit. Walk or run, just the reach the finish line which is not all that far away.  It looks like fun.   Maybe in four years time.

  I have been to Nemea many times in the olden/golden days after the grape harvest in September to pick up great barrels of grape juice for K's wine.  I have also visited the remains of the temple to Zeus with visitors and it is one of my favourite ruins.  There are impressive temple columns still standing and  a museum better than most. 

                       The columns of the temple of Zeus    

The beautiful green museum grounds

Nemea today is better known for its great wineries.  We always bought our grape juice from the smaller suppliers but one year we visited some of the bigger outfits to see if we could do some wine tasting.  No such luck  ten years ago but wine tasting and grape festivals are now becoming the fashion and you can visit a few of the wineries.  The 'Great Days of  Nemea' wine festival is held in late August before the September grape harvest.  This includes a 10k run through the vineyards, wine tasting and theatre.

We used to load up the boot and back seat of the car with 100 litre plastic barrels and bring home juice which had started to ferment for red and white wine.  This was then decanted into K's wooden barrels throughly cleaned and sterilised.

Plastic wine barrels

On the way home we would always stop at a small taverna down by the river and try some of the local goat and a litre of their own red wine.  In days gone by.  K did not make any wine this year and in the last couple of years he has only put up 100 litres of local white  from the grapes of our neighbour Vaso.

Nemean taverna.  Local wine and local goat.