The Great Grape Stomp of Aught Eight

Like every little girl, I had big dreams. After my dream of becoming a mermaid didn’t workout, I turned my sights to the Olympic all-around title in gymnastics (I think I was closer to becoming a mermaid!)

Those dreams have faded but one remains - my elusive dream to emulate the life and hijinks of Lucille Esmeralda McGillicuddy Ricardo. I’ve had a few Lucy-esque shenanigans –the disastrous pull-up bar is just one of a litany of examples. Given my penchant for Lucy-like schemes, you can then only imagine how excited I was when Alina found the 2nd Annual 'I Love Lucy' Grape Stomp Competition at 3 Foxes Vineyard.

To prepare for the competition, we started by doing just the slightest research into grape stomping strategies (How do you stomp effectively? Common problems to avoid, etc). On the big day we donned our Lucy-inspired outfits and headed to the winery. When we arrived, the competition was already underway. We were placed in the 9th heat and competed with the over 50 teams that were registered. Then suddenly a crazy thing happened---I had a strange feeling wash over me—COMPETITIVENESS!

I suddenly thought, "we can do this! Look at all those people stomping without a strategy—wasting time and energy hopping around, or twirling about like a washing machine gone awry." It was stomping chaos and I knew that we could make it to the finals. After warming up, stretching, and a few practice stomps in the grass, it was our turn.

We climbed into the barrel full of grapes, and stomped. We executed our pre-planned strategy - of course, I can’t reveal the details of our strategy here, for fear our competition for next years stomp may be trolling the blogosphere in hopes of stealing our strategy! ☺ For 3 minutes, we stomped and filled 14 cups of grape juice—we were seeded 2nd going into the finals! HOORAY

The rules were different for the finals. Only one minute of stomping and we had to provide our own "cupper." Suddenly, JC - who we convinced to come along only to take pictures and hold the dog - was recruited as a critical team member! I talked her through our strategy and what we expected of her as cup filler/hole poker/stem remover and finished with some really encouraging words like, ‘if you screw this up for us—I’ll kill you with my grape-stained feet!’ Poor JC, she’s a good sport!

We were in the first group of finalists. The defending champions, a team of 60-something men with gigantic feet, were in the second group. We knew we had to be really effective stompers to overcome our biggest weakness—my tiny little (useless) feet!!!! WHY, OH WHY, wasn’t I born with giant clown feet. We had to stomp and hope our number held. Right before we went out, Alina said—‘we’re in it to win it!’ And we were! We climbed in our barrel, got the go cue and stomped like lunatics. The competitiveness was overwhelming, I found myself screaming things at JC like ‘NEW CUP NEW CUP’ and ‘GET THAT STEM CLEARED, NOWWWWWW!!!!’ A minute later, we had stomped 13.5 cups of grape juice. What WERE we doing the last 2 minutes of the first round?!?!

We had to wait, watch and hope that we had set an unbeatable standard. It was not to be! The defending champions (aka Big Foot) won the day! But, we came in second (and looked much more like Lucy and Ethel doing it!). We’ll be back next year ---I’m sure the defending champions are quaking in their giant boots.

For all pics see here, courtesy of JC