Almachar Moscatel Market Marks Tenth Edition on Sunday The tenth Moscatel Market fills Almachar on Sunday 8 November with raisin growers, ajoblanco, verdiales music and a wine tasting celebrating the moscatel grape at the heart of the Axarquia's protected farming heritage. The village of Almachar opens its streets to the moscatel grape this Sunday, 8 November, as the Mercado Moscatel returns for its tenth edition. From half past ten in the morning until half past six in the evening, the Maria Zambrano park will hold a market devoted entirely to the product that made the Axarquia famous: sun-dried muscat raisins and the sweet wines made from the same grape. The event is organised by the town council with support from the provincial authority, and this year's presentation brought together provincial representative Sagrario Molina, the mayor of Almachar, Antonio Yuste, and the spokespeople of the local Moscatel Association, whose families have run the fair since its first edition a decade ago. The market itself will gather growers, winemakers and food producers from across the district. Stands will sell moscatel wines and raisins alongside local cheeses, cured meats and other village products, many of them carrying the province's own quality label for traditional foods. The point, organisers say, is to put the people who grow the grape in front of the people who eat and drink it, without intermediaries. The day has a full programme. After the official opening, the fair will name its Moscatel Ambassador for this year, a distinction that in past editions has gone to individuals and institutions connected with the promotion of Axarquia produce. At half past twelve, the square fills for one of the most popular moments of the day: a demonstration of ajoblanco, the cold almond and garlic soup that is a signature dish of Malaga's summer table, prepared in large mortars and handed out to visitors in cups. Music runs through the whole afternoon. Bands of verdiales, the frenetic folk music of the Malaga mountains with its violins, guitars and tambourines, will play between performances of traditional circle dancing, the kind of scene that turns a food market into a village fiesta. At half past one, the programme moves to wine, with a guided tasting led by two wineries from the district. Anyone wanting a seat needs to sign up during the morning at the Moscatel Association stand. Alongside the market, the Sala Axarquia of the town's cultural centre will host the exhibition Windows to Art and Moscatel, a travelling show that pairs local artists with the culture of the raisin. The exhibition opened its route in August at the muscat grape festival in Iznate and has since travelled to the Night of Wine in Competa, Almachar's own ajoblanco festival in September, the grape growers' fiesta in Moclinejo and the raisin festival in El Borge, closing its circuit in the town where the raisin trade has its historic heart. Behind the celebration sits an agricultural tradition with international recognition. The moscatel raisin of the Axarquia depends on more than two thousand families who still cultivate the hillsides much as their great-grandparents did: the bunches are cut by hand with a small piece of stem, dried in the sun on wicker beds set on the hillsides, then finished and packed by hand across the winter. The scale is small, the work is hard and the prices are at the mercy of each harvest. That traditional landscape has been recognised by the United Nations food agency as a globally important agricultural heritage system, one of a handful in Spain. The label does not change what farmers earn, but it does confirm what the fair is defending: a way of growing a crop that cannot be mechanised on these slopes, and a landscape of dry-stone walls and vine terraces that no other part of Europe reproduces. For visitors, the fair is an easy day out from anywhere on the coast. Almachar sits half an hour inland from Malaga and less than that from the beaches of Rincon de la Victoria, a compact white village stacked on its hillside with bars and viewpoints through the old centre. The market hours, ten thirty to six thirty, leave time for both the tastings and a slow lunch in the shade. Ten editions in, the Moscatel Market has become one of the quiet fixtures of the autumn calendar in the Axarquia, a fair that sells raisins and wine but carries something larger with it: the argument that the identity of these hills, their food and their farming methods are worth protecting precisely because they cannot be industrially reproduced. Sunday is the day the grape gets its town back.