In Ilia, the cultivation of raisin vines is recorded in the Venetian census of 1700 AD. With the establishment of the new Greek state, Ilia and the entire NW Peloponnese are engaged in raisin cultivation, the production of which leaves for England (mainly) and Holland directly from the ports of Corinth, Aegion, Patras, Katakolo, Gargaliana (Marathia) and Pylos.

The intensive cultivation of the 7.5 acres (1.5 hectares) of land given in 1871 to 350,000 landless people led to the over-cultivation of raisins. In Ilia, the cultivated acres reached 150,000, making the product the only one of its kind and the local community completely dependent on it.

Katakolo – Raisin loading before the war www.iliakanea.gr

Demand meets supply until 1892 when France faces phylloxera and in 1893 when French demand stops, prices plummet to 42 gold francs per 1000 liters of product from the 300 gold francs per 1000 liters of product in 1890.

Poverty, popular reaction and the first raisin uprising of 1903, centered in Varvasaina, followed: The producers, led by G. Papastasinos, occupied Pyrgos and “dragged” the train to Amaliada, in order to force the SEK to take them to Athens, so that they could protest to the government for the failure to pass the raisin monopoly by English raisin merchants.

The state, with a series of laws from 1895 to 1905, with the raisin reform and the establishment of the unified company for the protection of the production and marketing of raisins, as well as the wave of immigration caused by the raisin crisis, balanced supply and demand with a reduction in cultivated areas. In Ilia, cultivated acres fell to 60,000 (a 60% reduction).

The deterioration continued, even though the Autonomous Raisin Organization (ASO) was created in 1925, with the participation of producers and the state, but it was quickly torn apart by battles between raisin producers and raisin merchants.

In August 1935 we have the second raisin crisis, where producers demand a price of 3,600 drachmas per 1000 liters of product, the abolition of the export tax and… the abolition of the ASO.

A conference is held on August 25 in Gargaliani and on August 26 the uprising is suppressed by the army at the Pylos rally.

After World War II ^and the Civil War, the cultivation of raisin vines resumed, but at the same time, where the raisin vines were left, wine vines were planted.

Loading into SPK wagons in the 1950s EAS Ilia – Olympia

In Ilia in 2014, equating three records (re-vineyard of burned areas 2007, Ministry of Agriculture 2009, PEP 2013) the vineyards amount to 80,000 hectares and are approximately equally divided between raisin vines and wine grapes, with a predominance of the former by 2-10%.

Of the approximately 40,000 hectares of vines, 70% are native varieties: roditis, fileri, mavroudi, mavrodaphne and refosco, which Mercouris brought to the region from Italy in 1870.

In the Municipality of Pyrgos, the wider area of ​​the Drouvas winery, we have 14,000 hectares of wine grapes (35% of the prefecture) and 32,000 hectares of raisin grapes (80% of the prefecture).

The prefecture’s wine production amounts to 16.8 million liters of white wine and 8.3 million liters of red wine, and 29% (7.3 million liters) is produced in private wineries, 18% (4.5 million liters) in cooperative wineries and 53% (13.3 million liters) by individuals (local winemaking).