The festival of St Tryphon – the patron saint of winemakers – attracted no tourists this year. This saint is very much loved in Bessarabia, the largely ethnic-Bulgarian area of Ukraine’s Odesa region, where the February feast is always a much-awaited event. This year, villagers pruned their vines and celebrated quietly by themselves.
Given the tragedy of the war in Ukraine, this tradition could have been abandoned altogether, for a number of local men have died at the front, and in the village cemeteries, their graves are still fresh. But to give up the tradition would be a form of capitulation and no one is prepared to do or even think about that.
