‘Till next year’, as Wine Festival finishes

DRUNKEN festivities and celebration came to a satisfying conclusion on Sunday, the last day of the 47th Wine Festival.

During the two-week-long festival, which saw an attendance of over 100,000 guests, a plentiful total of over 70,000 litres of wine, from the numerous wine taps placed around the Limassol Municipal Gardens, were consumed. Local wine producers, who had set up stalls selling their own bottles of wine, also received a lot of business.

Although a large proportion were Cypriot, a lot of the festival’s visitors were tourists, mostly from Russia, the United Kingdom or Scandinavia.

The Mayor of Limassol, Andreas Christou, toasted to next year’s festival. “Till we meet again next year in the Municipal Gardens. The 2009 Wine Festival has been organised to take place between August 28 and September 6.”

Among the things on offer, the Festival included several opportunities for wine tasting, with specialists from Canada, Greece and Cyprus. Cypriot music groups and ensembles, theatrical performances and other artistic events added to the atmosphere of the festival honouring the traditional Cypriot alcoholic drink.

The support of the Cyprus Tourist Organisation (CTO) was particularly encouraging, organising coaches for tourists who were staying outside Limassol. CTO officials stated that the Organisation should immediately begin planning its support for the next festival and should include it in tourist presentations given during international exhibitions.

All in all, the Wine Festival was a great success, with no complaints or problems regarding prices of products and their quality, hygiene and cleanliness. The head of the Cultural Services of the municipality even went so far to consider this year’s organisation the smoothest in the festival’s history.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.