A foot-stompin’ good time
July 24, 2008
If you’re an “I Love Lucy” fan you probably won’t want to miss Saturday’s second annual “Great Grapes! Stomp-Off” contest to be held at the International Great Grapes! Wine, Arts & Food Festival at Anne Arundel County Fairgrounds.
The stomp-off is a qualifier for the Maryland Regional’s World Championship Grape Stomp, and the winning team will be determined by the amount of juice created from each barrel after five minutes of stomping. The winners will receive two plane tickets to compete at the World Championship Grape Stomp at the Sonoma County Fair in Santa Rosa, Calif.
Note to would-be contestants: stomping grapes is not as easy as it looks. It’s tiring, dirty and it takes forever to do the job that — thankfully — machines these days accomplish much more efficiently. So before you head out to the fairgrounds, kick off your shoes and jump into the grape basin, I’d recommend checking out a few sites that show what not to do and give you some idea of what to expect.
But despite being out-of-date, this practice has lived on as one of the more recognizable images of the wine industry and grape stomping contests seem to go hand-in-hand (or should I say hand-in-foot?) with wine festivals. And the popularity of the activity seems to signify the growing wine industry in Maryland.
While some older winemakers have long had grape stomping contests as a part of their touristy caches, the activity in Maryland has been catching on in the last few years. And according to recent industry figures, sales are consistently increasing, and last year Maryland wineries sold more than 1 million bottles for the first time.
Do you think that the recent rise in the number of wine festivals and activities is a trend or a sign that Maryland wineries are gaining more of a foothold in the industry?
LIZ FARMER, Business Writer
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I think the recent rise in wine festivals is due to ever-increasing alcohol abuse. For some reason, it’s deemed “ok” by a lot of society to be a drunk so long as you got drunk on wine.
Given its rapid growth in the state and a product that’s gradually earning respect, I think the Maryland wine industry is on a long-term trajectory.