Some people believe wine is still made by peasants who crush the grapes with their bare feet, leaving toenails and other disgusting, disease-ridden peasant-foot debris in the wine. This is, of course, nonsense. Today's winemakers crush the grapes with modern, hygienic machines, and add the disease-ridden peasant-foot debris later.
— Dave Barry column "The Art of Wine Snobbery", Dave Barry's Bad Habits:
A character goes to a vineyard or an Arcadian setting and is offered wine. They drink from it and, curious about the winemaking process, see the people stomping grapes over a vat with their bare feet, while they're drenched in grape juice, and can occasionally fall over in the process. Reactions from the drinker can vary from I Ate WHAT?!, spitting their drink out when it literally tastes like feet, or they still drink it whether it tastes like feet or they appreciate the handmade, or in this case, foot-made process. Perhaps the character also wants to participate in the process and may end up being covered in more juice and/or falling over as well.
In the ancient world, especially where the Romans left their marks note , up until the industrial revolution in Europe, wine was made manually by putting grapes or other berries in a large vat and having people stomp them into juice with their bare feet. The other method was placing the vat into a winepress, which was more efficient. Despite the outdatedness, it is still done in competitions, and there are some old-fashioned wineries that still utilize this laborious and time-consuming technique.
A Sub-Trope of Spaghetti and Gondolas, Toros y Flamenco, and Arcadia.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Dr. STONE: The earlier chapters have Senku and Taiju stomping fruit to make wine to distill into brandy for making revival fluid. Later, sisters Kohaku and Ruri do the same.
- In the first Slayers anime film, Lina gets hypnotized by an illusionist into thinking that she's back in her home country of Zephilia, and it's the harvest festival. Lina is then forced to pretend that she's engaged in one of the main activities of the festival: stomping on the newest grape harvest to make wine.
Comic Books
- Persepolis: When the new Iranian government bans alcohol, Marji's uncle builds a wine-making lab in his basement. His cleaning lady Mrs. Nasrine is in charge of stomping the grapes, although she exclaims, "God forgive me! God forgive me!" while doing so.
Comic Strips
- Dennis the Menace (US): In one strip, Gina tells Dennis and Joey that her grandfather in Italy stopped grapes with his bare feet. Upon hearing this, Dennis tells her "Boy, I bet he's still in time-out!"
- FoxTrot: One story has Jason convincing his father to make wine through the grape stomping technique instead of buying some from the store. It dissolves his athlete's foot treatment, which along with other mishaps along the way leads to the family using the wine as drain cleaner.
Fan Works
- In the Laverne & Shirley fanfiction Schotz Wine
, Laverne and Shirley's boss has them step on grapes to make wine. Due to their clumsiness, both end up falling over in the process.
Films — Animation
- Coonskin: When The Mafia is being introduced with the Don and Mario, while they're speaking, we see two elderly people dressed in rags around their waists stomping grapes. At the end of the dialogue between the Don and Mario, the Don throws a knife at one of them, killing him and prompting the other to stomp much faster.
- Fantasia: In the "Pastoral Symphony" segment, a group of satyrs dance around in a vat full of grapes, pulping them with their hooves while preparing for a festival honoring the wine god Bacchus.
- My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rollercoaster of Friendship: When Rarity calls Applejack about getting the job at Equestria Land, we see Big Mac, Apple Bloom, and her stomping apples to make cider.
Films — Live-Action
- Being the Ricardos revisited the I Love Lucy grape-stomping scene by showing how the idea evolved in the writers' room. Lucy suggests that her character lose an earring in the tub of grapes, and we see Lucy Ricardo flinging herself down and pawing through the stomped grapes in a frenzy.
- A Walk In The Clouds: The Aragon family run a very traditional vineyard, with grapes being crushed underfoot by the married women of the family dancing on them. Victoria is excited to participate, even though Paul is uncomfortable with it because their marriage is a pretense — and doubly uncomfortable when she uses the dance as an opportunity to flirt with him.
Literature
- Barbapapa: In one episode of the animated series, the Barbapapa family are picking grapes and wish to make wine, so Barbabright makes a machine that will press the grapes for them. Problem is, the machine needs oil, which leaks into the grape juice and gives it a terrible taste. So, they have the idea to stomp the grapes instead, which saves their wine — and is a lot more fun.
- In The Intuition of Haruhi Suzumiya, Tsuruya relates such an experience as part of a mystery for the Brigade. She and foreign exchange student "T" were travelling through Europe and stumbled upon a local festival featuring grape-stomping. The two join in, using the the changing room to escape from T's minder.
Live-Action TV
- Bassie & Adriaan: In the Portugal episode of "De Geheimzinnige Opdracht", the two protagonists visit a winery where grapes are still processed in this manner. They are even invited to participate in it.
- One sabotage on Cutthroat Kitchen requires a chef to stop cooking their dish and stomp enough grapes to fill a wine bottle.
- Grand Crew: When the group go to a vineyard, Noah and Anthony partake in a stomping demonstration. When Noah accidentally drops the number of a woman he just met into the grapes, he is told not to touch them with his hands because that would ruin the integrity of the juice (with Anthony noting the fact that their bare feet are currently in the grapes), so he has to fish it out with his feet.
- I Love Lucy: One of the show's most iconic episodes, "Lucy's Italian Movie", involves Lucy stomping grapes as part of her audition for a movie that takes place in Italy. It ends up being more exhausting than Lucy expected, leading to the regular grape-stomper berating her, Lucy shoving her in response, and a messy fight in the grapes.
- Kaamelott: After drinking a little bit too much of their own wine, Gethenoc and the other peasants pridefully admit that they stomp the grapes with their own feet and keep going even if they start bleeding. Which might be one reason why it tastes so bad.
- Love Island: In Series 8, Davide and Ekin-Su's date involves them crushing wine with their bare feet, presumably because Davide is Italian.
- Mock the Week: During a round of Scene We'd Like to See, the topic is "Things You Wouldn't Hear on a Cookery Show":
Milton Jones: So today I'm going to be making banana wine and I'm going to be pressing the skins with my bare feet. [yelps as he falls down]
- The Monk episode titled, "Mr. Monk Gets Drunk", has the eponymous detective taking a trip to wine country with Natalie. He enjoys the wine...until he discovers this is how it's made. One of the winery's staff boasts that they are one of the only wineries that still employ this old-fashioned method. Monk naturally isn't impressed, and after that, all he can taste is the feet, and thereafter refers to it as "foot wine."
- In the Odd Squad episode "The Odd Antidote", Olive and Otto obtain one liter of Loganberry juice by having the latter mash Loganberries with his feet while Logan the Ogre plays the violin beside him and Olive collects the juice.
- Pawn Stars: Chumlee does this after the shop acquires a large glass bottle designed for fermenting wine. He stomps on the grapes, adds the yeast, then adds actual wine for coloring, etc. During the tasting, Rick and Corey spit it out but the Old Man actually seems to enjoy it, although it's up in the air whether he really did or was just doing a Pet the Dog in appreciation of Chumlee's efforts, since the gang had been riffing on him that he'd never get it done.
- Phil of the Future: One episode has Phil's class going on a field trip to stomp grapes, which worries Phil because he, like everyone else from the future, has only four toes on each foot. To avoid being found out, he wears fake prosthetic toes on the trip, but they fall off while he's squishing, and Hilarity Ensues.
Newspapers
- Mentioned in a Dave Barry column about winemaking in California:
Some wineries also give guided tours wherein they show you how wine is made.
The process starts with the grapes, which ripen on vines under the watchful eyes of the head wine person (or "poisson de la tete") until exactly the right moment, at which point they form a huge swarm and follow the queen to the new hive location.
No, wait, I'm thinking of bees. When the grapes are ripe, they're harvested and stomped on barefoot by skilled stompers until they (the grapes) form a pulpy mass (called the "fromage") which is then discarded. Then the head wine person drives to the supermarket and buys some nice hygienic bunches of unstomped grapes, which are placed in containers with yeast — a small but sexually active fungus — and together they form wine.
The wine is then bottled and transported to the Pretentious Phrase Room, where professional wine snots perform the most critical part of the whole operation: thinking of ways to make fermented grape juice sound more complex than nuclear physics.
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: A contentious practice in the Empire, according to the adventure "A Brutal Finish". One hygiene-conscious religious leader popularized mechanical winepresses to stamp it out, but traditionalists like the halfling Clan Whistler take pride in foot-pressing all their own grapes, drawing equally strident critics and defenders.
Video Games
- The Club Penguin minigame "Smoothie Smash" features a penguin making smoothies by jumping on a bunch of fruit laid out on a table — not just grapes but also other fruit like bananas, strawberries, and mangos, while avoiding stepping on anvils and bombs.
- The farmer in Knights and Merchants is shown to make wine that way.
- In Octodad, grape stomping is one of the tasks you have to complete in the restaurant level. Given that you're an octopus, this can be trickier than it sounds.
- The Sims, has the Nectar Maker, where a Sim can produce "nectar" by stomping fruit, and placing it in the inventory to be stored in a dedicated nectar placer or be sold with a varying price range depending on the skill.
- The Sims Makin Magic has the Sim drop grapes and elderberries in the machine, change their clothes to swimwear, and dance as they stomp the fruit. Once it's done, it can be stored in the Sim's inventory or a dedicated bar and can be sold at a high price if the Sim has a high cooking skill.
- The Sims 3 World Adventures expands the feature, where a Sim can travel to the Champs Les Sims, the Sims version of France, and either acquire the grape stomping machine through an adventure or buy it at a vineyard. A Sim can place any fruit in the machine, and it can be placed on the inventory or a nectar rack, where the quality and price can depend on the flavor and aging of the nectar, and the Nectar Making and Gardening skill level of the Sim.
- In Stronghold 2 and Legends, wine is produced after the grapes are harvested from the vineyard, and a winemaker goes to the stockpile, brings it to their workshop to stomp the grapes, and brings the barrels to the Lord's Kitchen to be brought to the castle's feast table. Wine is the most expensive product to produce, but can bring honor points to buy estates and recruit troops.
- WarioWare: Get It Together!: One of the boss stages, Great Juice, involves the players helping a grape farmer squash some of his produce down into grape juice. All characters involved have to physically press down on the grapes with their bodies—whether they can fly or not, their feet (or at least the bottom of their craft) must be touching the grapes to successfully juice them.
- World of Warcraft:
- In the Legion expansion, part of your infiltration into the Nightborne city of Suramar involves assisting in the making of arcwine, the drink Nightborne elves use to sustain their need for mana. The process includes getting into the vat and stomping the berries used to make it, along with adding ingredients as instructed. Later, this sequence becomes a repeatable World Quest.
- In Battle for Azeroth, the questline to recruit the Vulpera into the Horde features a return to the Suramar vineyard, where production has been down. In this case, the elf in charge isn't making good use of his resources, having the diminutive Goblins do the grape-stomping when the larger, heftier, bigger-footed Tauren are on hand to do the job.
- Zeus: Master of Olympus: The working animation for the winery shows workers stomping around in the grape vat.
Western Animation
- Ed, Edd n Eddy: Rolf drafts Ed to help him make raspberry juice by the foot-stomping way in "Mirror, Mirror, on the Ed". The Eds had earlier dared each other into switching lifestyles, meaning Rolf has to make do with Double D.
Rolf: "You have cursed my raspberries to the life of salad dressing, imposter with tiny feet!"
- Goofy: In the "How to Dance" video, when listing the reasons people danced, the Narrator states that one of them was to "bring in his crops", showing people dancing on grapes to juice them.
- Looney Tunes: In the short "A Hound for Trouble", Charlie Dog tries to please his new master, a restaurant owner in Italy, by serving one of his customers, including stomping grapes into fresh wine right in front of him. The customer can barely control his gag reflex as he heads out the door.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- "Sisterhooves Social": Applejack and Apple Bloom prepare for the titular event by stomping grapes in a matter of seconds, along with applebucking and pie-eating. Sweetie Belle, upon witnessing the grape juice stomping, remarks that Rarity would call the fashion police on her if she gets grape juice anywhere near her outfits. By the race proper, Rarity, disguised as Applejack and covered in mud, also does the grape stomping with Sweetie Belle in order to reconcile with her.
- "Brotherhooves Social": Applejack, along with Rarity, isn't available for the Sisterhooves Social due to a friendship mission, and Big Macintosh becomes a substitute, and thinking that the event was only for mares, disguises himself as "Orchard Blossom". At the grape stomping event, Apple Bloom climbs over the vat, and Big Mac, wanting to be in the lead, jumps over and squashes the entire vat, spilling grape juice over many jars, and Apple Bloom drips over in one.
- "On Your Marks": Apple Bloom stomps grapes alongside background ponies, Berry Punch and Cherry Berry during a song sequence, though this time she trips out of the vat.
- Parodied in the Rocko's Modern Life episode "Put To Pasture". While Rocko and Filbert were trying to stuff as many potato based products into Heffer's mouth for a school science project, the two of them dress in old fashioned Italian women clothes and start stomping the potatoes with their bare feet.
- The Simpsons:
- "The Crepes of Wrath": Bart is forced to stomp grapes by his abusive caretakers while he's an exchange student in France.
- "The Italian Bob": After the Simpsons are shocked to discover that Sideshow Bob became the mayor of an Italian village, he explains that he came across the town when a group of villagers were trying to squash grapes, but discovered Sideshow Bob's uniquely humongous feet and had him make wine. They chose him as the mayor and he stayed there and had a family.
- TaleSpin: A variant in "Pizza Pie in the Sky"; when Louie turns his nightclub into a pizza air delivery service, he puts tomatoes in a vat and stomps on them to make pizza sauce.
- El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera: The famous and expensive guacamole known as "Guacamole de Los Angeles" is made from the finest avocados hand-picked by blind monkeys and then crushed underfoot like wine grapes by fair ladies in the Andes mountains. Manny and Freida are forced to do the last step of the process for a year as punishment for using the money entrusted to them to buy a tattoo kit instead of said guacamole.
Real Life
- The brand Barefoot Wine is named after this method.
