Even millennials know of the famous “I Love Lucy” grape-stomping episode, thanks to classic television stations and YouTube. My personal favorite, however, is definitely Keanu Reeves and Aitana Sánchez-Gijón in the slightly cheesy 1995 movie “A Walk in the Clouds.” With breathtaking Napa Valley in the background, ladies stomp around this huge vat with their dresses hiked up to here and gone until a group of men put Reeves in with his new bride and … cue the cheesy music.
To be honest, as dreamy as it all looks, it does not appear sanitary. Shoot, at one point the stunning S?nchez-Gij?n wildly twirls her grape-soaked locks, causing me to think “Where’s your hair net, woman?”
In truth, this was how it all began (possibly as far back as 5400 B.C.) and foot treading is actually still practiced for some high-end ports. Grape-stomping for mass production, however, occupied only a brief point in winemaking history. Keep in mind that Egyptian pyramids continue to be classified as engineering marvels, so it stands to reason they devised a far more efficient juice-extracting method than feet in a barrel — and illustrations have been uncovered showing workers using a cloth press in varying stages of advancement.
In Portugal, where port producers are the last bastions of foot treading, the tradition stems from a hundreds-of-years-old history of workers coming together after the harvest to extract the flavor and color from the grapes in the gentlest way possible — by kneading the fruit with their feet for up to four hours in lagares (shallow tanks made of stone or concrete). Small amounts of vintage port, which command the highest prices of this fortified wine, are still crafted in this fashion, but since the entire bottle yield of vintage accounts for approximately two percent of total Port production, it’s quite limited. Instead, even long-established port houses have embraced the technological advances of robotic lagares introduced in the 1990s. They use silicone pads to mimic the pressure of a human foot and are cleverly referred to as Port-Toes.
