Grape Stomping Party

For my birthday, I’d like to have a party where we step on grapes,” said my now fiancée four years ago. “Huh?” “Yeah, let’s step on grapes just like Lucille Ball did in that famous I Love Lucy episode.” And so started the tradition of our annual grape stomping party. At the time of the above conversation, I was a novice winemaker. I had been fermenting homemade wine for a few years using kits and grape juice but I had zero experience with fresh grapes. There was a lot to learn in that first year. What grapes should we use, how much should we stomp, how will we sanitize everyone’s feet? With the Internet not providing much help, I turned to my local home winemaking store. I walked into Philly Homebrew Outlet and talked with one of the owners, Jimmy, about my new undertaking. He too had no experience in crushing grapes by foot, but between the two of us we figured out how to make it work. The process is rather straightforward. We destem the grapes and dump them