QotD: Grape-stomping

But Lucy is no longer the reigning queen of slap-stomp. That honor belongs to a lady from Fox News. In a video making the rounds, she stomps grapes in a rubber tub set on a high wooden platform. Partway through she falls off and out of camera range, and for the rest of the video you just hear her horrific screams of pain. People can't stop watching this, which maybe explains why they love Lucy.

But it doesn't explain grape stomping. Or the fact that it's still done in this age of hygiene and motors. It's often just a harmless publicity stunt, quite effective when performed at ground level. But some wineries, in Portugal for instance, still press their best wine this way. Drunk men in dirty shirts with unclipped toenails and lit cigarettes dangling from their lips still climb into cement troughs, or lagars, filled with grapes. Then, whooped-up by a local band, they clasp arms and march back and forth in the muck, occasionally falling face down in it.

Fortunately, the alcohol level in Port is high enough to kill both toe jam and jock itch, though some feel those are part of the ineffable bouquet of Old World wine.

Jennifer "Chotzi" Rosen, "I Hate Lucy", Cork Jester, 2006-08-22