Why stomp grapes

Due to travel restrictions, plans are only available with effective start dates on or after. Use this tool to calculate all purchases like ski-lift passes, show tickets, or even rental equipment. You want something new: the experience of truly making wine, starting with stomping the grapes. Want to feel some fruit between your toes? There are plenty of wineries and grape festivals where you can try grape stomping, both in the United States and overseas.

The experience is offered daily from mid-August through late October; just show up, take off your shoes, roll up your pant cuffs and jump into the barrel of grapes. Afterward, you can put your winy footprints on a special T-shirt to take home and enjoy a complimentary glass of wine. The minute the grapes reach peak ripeness, everyone joins in to harvest them and begin the fermentation process. Rather not have purple feet?

The July festival includes vineyard tours, live music and a grape stomping contest in which couples compete to produce the most juice. Best of all, you can pair your wine tastings with a lunch that tastes like summer in Texas: smoked brisket, jalapeno-cheddar biscuits, and strawberry shortcake.

Minnesota actually has a thriving winemaking business. More than 40 wineries operate in the state, most of which are found south of Minneapolis. At the festival, grape stomping is serious business. After three days of intense competition, the grand champions win a case of Vino De Feet wine.

You can take a culinary tour of a Provencal farm , where you can learn the French art of winemaking and stomp some grapes in an enormous, antique oaken barrel. Would you like a little luxury to go with your purple feet? Calistoga Ranch, a spa resort in a wooded canyon, offers a family grape stomp experience. Kids can happily smoosh grapes while their parents get a hands-on lesson in wine blending with a winemaker. Part of the process of making red wine is the punch down , which means breaking up the floating cap of grape skins in the fermentation vat.

Mixing and remixing the skins with the juice helps oxygenate the mixture, allows heat to escape, and produces a richer flavor. At William Chris Vineyards , a winery 50 minutes west of Austin, guests are invited, usually on the first weekends of August, to help punch down the grapes — with their hands, not feet! Participants learn about winemaking in a seminar, then scrub their arms all the way up to their shoulders before plunging them into the vats.

In South Africa, the grape harvest season takes place in February and March — autumn, in the southern hemisphere. Spanning four towns and 20 wineries, the grape festival includes picking, grape stomping, vineyard safaris, wine blending and wine tasting. Angela washes her feet in an iodized water solution before and in between each bin. Remember too that grapes go straight from the dusty farm into tanks, as well as the air is filled with dust and particles that can easily settle into tanks — but everything solid in wine forms into sediment and falls to the bottom of the tank before it is filtered out and bottled.

So who wants to come try it this harvest? If you enjoyed reading this article please add your name to our mailing list HERE.

Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Luckily, there are still plenty of places where you can give it a try. The art of grape stomping is exactly what it sounds like — crushing wine grapes by stomping on them with your feet- so as to release their juice and begin the wine making process. Plus, many modern experts continue to argue that it leads to a smoother flavor, and gets fermentation underway faster than other methods.

Nowadays, most grape stomping festivals are more for fun than they are for creating mass quantities of wine. Are you ready to feel those grapes beneath your toes? Every year, the county plays host to a festival known as the Valley of the Moon Vintage Festival. Celebrating the beginning of the harvest, this fun-filled festival includes many different wine-themed events and activities. Our favorite is definitely the wine stomping.

The festival is held annually in September, and there are lots of other fun activities to try. Many revolve around wine, but there are also some unique options like a family-friendly fun run. Harvest arrives around October, and is celebrated with an appropriate level of enthusiasm. Many of the wineries in the region host fun family-friendly events and activities, including many where you can give grape stomping a go.