Plump, sweet and juicy

Non, non, non!  I am not referring to the ladies pictured here.   I am referring to the grapes we were sent out to cut down from the vines.

The late harvest white, turning very sweet the longer they stay on the vine.

These are a bit plumper.
So what's all this about?  The Second Annual Grove Winery Grape-Stomping sponsored by The Wine Authorities.  We (about 55-60 of us) boarded a bus and off we went to Guilford county, watching the I Love Lucy episode when Lucy is in Italy and goes out to stomp grapes to "soak up local color" and ends up soaking up too much!  A classic. 
We were sent out into the vines in teams-- I was on the Spice team (I am now Culinary Spice)-- charged with cutting the white grapes, de-bugging them (just in case a spider was hiding) and choosing only those that we would actually put in our mouths and eat.  I did have to taste them frequently, quality control, you know.  The bees were out and about, but I avoided them, luckily.

No spiders + no bees = very happy grape picker.

This is my lug.  It took a while to find this many grapes.  Due to the very hot weather and no rain, the bulk of the grapes at Grove had already been harvested.  Max and John--

decided we should make a sweet dessert wine, something they've wanted to do for a while.  But why pay pickers to do what we would do happily for free?
After the grapes were picked, we had lunch and tasted several of Grove's wines.  The sky opened up and the rain began while we were under the tent.  It did not put a damper on our fun, however (and the good Lord knows we are desperate for rain in North Carolina).  The stomping was set up under cover and off we went.

We stepped into 4 different foot-washing-rinsing solutions before stepping into the vat with the grapes.

It really wasn't so bad if you got the "new" grapes, the unstomped ones.  But if you were the third or fourth one in the vat, it was a bit slimy and slippery.

We also stomped some red grapes-

And here are my feet afterwards--

No, they didn't turn purple.  The juice was all clear, even from the red grapes.

Two new Lucys in the making!  Pink-tank-top Lucy didn't like the texture- she was only good for one round.  Blue-skirt Lucy may have found a new career.

Think Lucy 1 and Lucy 2 are having fun?
We worked up an appetite with all that stomping around so we had a little snack-

Doesn't that look délicieux?

A locally-made fromage.
We made new friends.  I loved the t-shirts some of them were wearing--

All sales final...
Thanks to Seth, Randy and Mic for organizing this wonderful outing.

And here's to the Lucys!

Bon appétit, Grape Stompers at Grove!