If you've seen that episode of I Love Lucy, or if you've ever been to a small town where they still make small batches of wine, you may have seen examples of an antiquated method of winemaking: stomping grapes.
Stomping grapes is actually a scientifically sound way of combining the grapes and their skins in order to make wine, although it's not as easy as you may think: you have to be fairly experienced to know how to get the most juice when stomping grapes.
Why Stomp?
In order to make red wine, you must first combine the skins and the fruits of the grapes: if the skins are removed, the wine will never get its bright red color.
Today, this is often done with machines, but before large-scale machines were invented, winemakers hired people (often women) to stomp the grapes barefoot to mix them.
Experienced women knew how to get the most juice when stomping grapes, and they would mix the grapes and skins together. The combination would then be put in barrels to age, the skins dying the juice red.
If the skins and juices were not adequately mixed, the skins might not give the wine the correct color, and you would end up with something that looked more like a dingy rosé than red wine.
What About Now?
Today, stomping grapes barefoot is becoming an antiquated tradition. There are still contests and festivals in some small towns, where people compete to see how to get the most juice when stomping grapes, but as far as large winemaking companies, this tradition is more of a memory than an actual practice.
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