🍀 Saxons - The Mashing Press from Roșia, Sibiu County

     In the picturesque South of Transylvania, both in Romanian and Saxon villages, large-capacity systems for crushing and pressing fruit were adopted. These were used to extract the sweet apple juice and prepare the apple cider vinegar. The magic of fruit processing usually took place in home production workshops set up in open sheds.                

     The mashing press from Roșia consists of a circular hardwood trough in which a vertically laid millstone was rolled smoothly. The engine of this mechanism was in fact a horse which circled inside the shed, driving the crushing stone in a crank-like system. When the yield was small, the stone could also be driven by hand, but with a rather large effort.

     The system is reminiscent of the olive-crushing stones from ancient Greece, which were later adopted by the Romans, under the name of trapentum.