Pass a vineyard in the interior of Datça on a September morning and you'll catch the smell first: ripened grapes, vine leaves gone faintly sour in the heat, the earth. Baskets stand in rows, hands move quickly among the branches. The work must be done before the midday heat sets in; grapes are picked in the cool of the morning, because as the day warms the balance inside the fruit shifts. No one explains this to you; it's simply that everyone has been up since early.
The harvest is not a date, but a smell and a hurry.
The Table Turns
The Aegean table is never late to notice the season. That big, juicy tomato that held the centre of the table until the end of August sits a little more quietly in September; the fig takes its place. The first figs show themselves in August most years, but their true ripe, honeyed state comes in September. Grapes are the same: the sweetest of the table grapes come in this in-between season, when the nights cool and the days still warm. And pomegranates begin — the first ones, not yet fully red, tending toward sour. To see these together is to read the season off the table. An old Datça hand can look at what's on the stall and tell you the day of the month.
Land and Sea, Generous at Once
The beauty of this month is that land and sea are generous at the same time. The water is still warm and the fish have begun to return; the vineyards, the fig trees, the olives are filling out. On deck the September table brings these two kinds of plenty together: a basket of figs from the morning market, a handful of fresh walnuts, a bowl of grapes chilled in the cove. Beside it, perhaps, a fish caught in the evening. Aegean cooking shies from display in any case; in September it grows plainer still, because the ingredients are so good that there's no need to touch them. A fig is split in two, a walnut cracked over it, and that's all. The season handles the rest.
The harvest is also the time when the coastal towns turn back to themselves. Once the summer crowd withdraws, the markets become local again; the stalls now carry goods meant not for the visitor but for the neighbour laying in winter stores. Grape molasses is boiled down, grapes are spread to dry, figs are laid out in the sun. The smell of this busyness settles over the whole town. You won't see it from the cove, but go up to the market in the morning and it's the first place you'll sense the season has turned.
To sit on deck with a plate of figs and watch the vineyards on the far slope is one of the plainest things September offers. Neither a show nor a menu. Only the season, exactly on time.
PRIVATE CHARTER →