That Time I Stomped Grapes

So lets be honest here.  I live in Sonoma County, adjacent to beautiful Napa Valley, and of course, surrounded by beautiful vineyards and wineries all around town.  When I moved up here exactly a year ago today I knew what I was getting myself into and I fast put “stomping grapes” onto my bucket list.

Of course, I had to fully wait a full year before that Bucket List item became reality.  This past weekend I attended the annual Valley of the Moon Vintage Festival in the Sonoma Square, and with that, I partook in a Grape Stomping Competition.  Yes folks, my first time stomping grapes happened to be a competition alongside my future Mother in Law.

When we first got up to the stage area, there were 6 buckets aligned together.  Each two person team was assigned a bucket.  We got bucket #6.  One person would be the person in the bucket stomping.  The other person would be the swabber, the person pushing the juice through the screen to fill the bucket up.

Then the Announcer counted down from three and away we went.

I stomped those grapes down, and throughout the 3 minute competition I kept doing my best to push the juice forward to help the swabber out.  After the 3 limit mark we were told to cap the sprout and get out of the buckets.  Then they announced the top 3 winners.

Lo and Behold, with our first attempt at Grape Stomping, we got first out of our heat.  We would be stomping in the finale.  We watched the next few rounds to scout out our competition, and soon the finalist round was up.  This time they had us draw our buckets.  We got #3 (pictured above!)

For the finalist round they made the competition 4 minutes long, and let me tell you, that extra minute made me that much more tired afterwards.  Away we went and tried our best.  At the end of the day we went home taking 4th place.  We each won a bottle of wine along with 250 Dollars to donate to a local charity (which I think is pretty awesome!)

Each round we got about 5 lbs worth of juice out of the grapes, and grape stomping is a lot harder than it looks!

Have you ever done it?