A winemaker’s wife

I have been contemplating for a long while about starting a blog, and decided that with the launch of our new website, the time has  come to finally pick up my pen. My next doubt was whether to write under a pen-name or just as me, Marleen. I choose a pen-name; ‘winemaker’s wife’. Not because I just define myself as the ‘the wife of’. That is way too non-feminist for me. Besides that I am a lot more than just a wife. I am a proud mum, a history geek, a traveller, a food lover and a bookworm.

No, I choose it because it catches what will be the subject of this blog. My life as the wife of a passionate winemaker and member of our family winery in the beautiful hills of Cyprus.  A life that 10 years ago would have sounded like a complete joke in my ears, but the joke became reality and here I find myself spending my days running around the family venture and our little son.

Marcos always jokes that our story is the ‘Hollywood story’ of falling in love on the other side of the world ( Australia in our case), pursuing the love and ending up happily ever after drinking wine in the Mediterranean sun…. Well, ofcourse it did not exactly go like that. The change from my bicycle friendly Dutch town Utrecht, full with friends and opportunities, to a small Mediterranean island was huge. No friends and no bicycles… I learned driving a car in no time, out of need.

Since then, the years have passed by and I gradually grew to love Cyprus. I started appreciating the blessing of the climate and the ever close proximity to the blue Mediterranean sea. I learned to love the Cypriot siga-siga (slowly-slowly), the local fresh food, the family ties, the friendliness of the people and the beauty of ‘small’. Most importantly I fell in love with its wine culture.

I have fully immersed myself in the new life and realised that our lifestyle, which by modern standards may be considered ‘rural’, is one that not a lot of young families consider so normal. Whereas most young Cypriots drive into town everyday for work, we only drive into town for fun&friends. A blessing, even if measured only by traffic frustrations.

It is exactly this ‘rural lifestyle’ of a young family running a winery, that I believe is worth blogging about. We come across so many funny situations in the winery, inspiring visitors, heartwarming people, cracking wines, and memorable moments. I want to share these with you, and make you a little bit part of the Zambartas family.

I will share with you our adventures, winefacts, the occasional recipe and mostly our passion for what we do.

Ow, and I promise, the next blog will not be about me. Enough.

Love,
A winemaker’s wife