PORT ANGELES — Guests at Olympic Cellars Winery on Saturday celebrated the harvest in the most traditional way — with sticky grapes between their toes.
In the same vein as Lucille Ball did in a classic television comedy 47 years ago, and perhaps with more enthusiasm, giddy grape squishers stomped, swished and grooved to polka music as bunches of Cabernet francs popped beneath their bare feet.
“It was wild!” said Valerie Lane of Seattle, who with partner Cathe Muller of Sequim won the first heat of the grape-stomping contest.
The effort left Muller, the designated “swamper” who collected the grape juice in a wine bottle, with bits of purple grape skin stuck to her arms and face.
The juice that didn’t make it into the bottle dripped from Lane’s toes.
“Just between us, I’m not too sure I want to drink that wine,” she said.
The grape stomping marked the winery’s first Harvest Party, inspired by tradition and the 1956 “I Love Lucy” episode that epitomizes the art.
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The rest of the story appears in Sunday’s Peninsula Daily News.
