The crop harvest was followed by the grape harvest and the olive harvest, which were pleasant occupations. Everyone took part to this activities, also the old and the youth people.
From dawn to dusk, in the vintage period, the countries and the fields were stuffed with chants and joyful loud talk, shouts and incitements: some people picked the bunchs from the grapes, putting them down in the baskets and then in the barrels, others loaded the animals with wood containers full of grapes, commuting from the vineyard to the houses where the grapes were pressed, also by feet.
In the cellars the youngest and sturdy men clutched the wine presses to squeeze the fruit to the last drop of must, continuously and slowly filling the barrels.
To give more colour to the wine, the must was keeped in the tubs or barrels for a longer period, together with the grapes skins.
The old were assigned to feed the "small furnace" ("fornacella"); above it there was a big copper cauldron where the must was boiled to prepare the "mulled wine", some kind of Porto or Vinsanto or Zibibbo, with the difference that these wines are made from the pressing of raisins, while the "cooked wine" was the result of the alcoholic fermentation of the must, which concentrated because of the drying process due to the boiling.
During the vintage, people ate only once in a day, because they continuously nibbled and so they were less hungry. They only had one meal in the evening at home.
After supper, while the women tidied up and prepared the breakfast for the next day, the men went back to the cellar to complete the filling of the must into the barrels, to control the sugar degree, to remove the marces from the presses, cleaning up and setting up the tools for the following day.
The making of wine in Bomba dates back to a very far time. An historian of 1700, Lorenzo Giustiniani, in his book "Dizionario geografico ragionato del Regno di Napoli" writes about Bomba : "In 1471 counted "165 fires"and the greater wealth came from the acorns, from the oil and the wine, that was cooked to be preserved".
Maybe due to this ancient tradition, the first cooperative wine growers' association of Abruzzo was created just in Bomba.
Also for the olive oil production, the Bomba municipality is in no way inferior to the other areas of Abruzzo. It is an extra-virgin oil made from olives which are not treated with antiparasitic, so they are natural and genuine. They are hand harvested, by climbing on the plants or by making fall down the drupes on nets laid on the base of the trees.
Once harvested and placed into sacks, they are carried to the oil press and processed by the end of the day. The stone presses exposed in the museum testify the old pressing processes of grapes and olives.The oil is produced grinfing the olives in special presses ("pistrini").
The grinder was moved by men or animals. Then the paste was put in the other containers and squeezed with grind presses.
In this area of the museum can be found other objects not connected to the processing of olives and grapes: baskets and saws of different shapes and functions, grills made of reed to dry figs and tomatoes, small grinders used in the past to grind the crop at home.
The last century, when the tax on meal was introduced, the farmers where obliged to go to public mills to grind the crop, but sometimes they secretly used the small grinders at home, risking to be uncovered and punished even by the destruction of the small grinds.
The stone presses are the ancestors of the modern presses; the stone presses ("strettoi") were followed by the wood presses and then by the metallic ones.