Purple legs are not just for tourists: grape stomping

Grapes are surprisingly tickly. Each time I lifted a foot in the knee-deep lagar of purple juice and stomped the floating stems and skins downward, they tickled my shins. Grape stomping is a hoot!

I’d helped harvest grapes once before, but never dared dream of stomping them. I had thought it was an archaic way to process the fruit into the initial stages of wine, not used any more except for token tourist thrills – a fun way to acknowledge the history of winemaking by jumping about in a barrel. All I really knew about it was the “I Love Lucy” sitcom episode with the grape stomping scene. (Yes, I’m dating myself.)

But then I discovered that grape stomping is still used to crush the fruit for wine and port in Portugal’s Douro River Valley. It’s not history – it’s today!

We learned all about it on a sunny September day at Quinta da Pacheca winery, near Peso de Regua in the Douro. Our superb “Harvest Experience” included a multi-course breakfast with wine, grape picking, winery tour, grape stomping, a multi-course lunch with wine pairings, and a hat and T-shirt to take home.

The Douro River Valley – the region where grapes for port wine are grown – is simply stunning. The wide river has cut a deep channel amongst the steep hills on its way to the Atlantic Ocean at the city of Porto. But inland, the river is lined with steeply terraced vineyards and olive groves, creating dramatic scenery. Winding roads dip down to river level and then back up hairpin turns to run along cliff edges.

The views are gorgeous … or heart-pounding, depending on how nervous you get along steep drop-offs with no guard rails. My sister Cynthia and I opted to sit in the back seat; we preferred not to see any impending Thelma-and-Louise moment of driving off a cliff. Bill drove and Jim navigated, while shaking their heads at us.

Who can refuse a good breakfast wine?! Our multi-course breakfast included generous wine pairings.

Our Harvest Experience began with donning Pacheca T-shirts and straw hats with wide brims to protect us from the sun. Quinta da Pacheca dates back to 1738 and was one of the first Douro wineries to bottle wine under its own label. However, grapevines have been grown there since the 1500s when the land belonged to two monasteries.

“We’ll start with a traditional breakfast to get a lot of energy to work in the harvest,” explained our Pacheca guide, Phillipa. She led us to a lovely spot: a long wooden table set under a shady arbour, with potted baby roses as centrepieces. One of the servers brought us white wine, and kept filling and re-filling our glasses.

“Breakfast wine!” said Jim. A first for all of us.

Then came the food: onion soup, pork sausage to go in the soup, grilled sardines, corn bread and olive oil. We ate and drank, toasting each other and Jim’s 65^th birthday that day with our “breakfast wine.”

We learned that Phillipa’s family has a small vineyard nearby. Her father and grandfather produce wine there still. We also met Pacheco, the gentle winery dog. He showed up one day at the winery and was adopted.

Armed with buckets and clippers, we headed into the vineyard to pick grapes.

Duly fortified with food and drink, we were ready for grape picking. Phillipa handed black buckets and hand clippers to everyone in our group and we walked out into the vineyard. She pointed us towards the rows where we were to clip the grape clusters from the vines. She told us to shout out “Balde” (which means ‘bucket’ in Portuguese) when our bucket was full and then empty it into the grey bins placed at intervals along the rows.

Jim was first to shout “Balde” and then Cynthia.

“You’re the Ronaldo of grape picking,” Phillipa said to Jim, referring to Cristiano Ronaldo, Portugal’s star futbol (soccer) player who was born in Madeira.

“When you’re looking at the vineyard, you think there’s not many grapes there but really, there’s so many they fill the buckets quickly,” said Bill, who was next to shout “Balde.”

When I finally put away my notebook, pen and camera, and concentrated on picking, I found he was right. My fingers quickly got sticky picking the tinta barroca grapes, to be used for table wine, although Pacheca also makes port.

“Balde!” That’s what you shout when you fill your bucket with grapes.

Grape picking is hard hot work. You bend over at the waist or squat, fumble under the leaves to find the top of the cluster, and try to not clip off other branches. After an hour of grape picking, we were sweaty and sticky and ready for more wine.

“We’ve decided we’re not going to apply for jobs here,” said Cynthia. We all agreed that we’ll appreciate, even more now, all the work that goes into each glass of our wine.

After a break to wash our hands, Phillipa led us on a short tour of the various wine cellars, including where the port wine is aged in barrels of different sizes, depending on how much contact it needs with the wood.

We ended the tour in a huge warehouse-like room with 11 lagares – large cement pools that can hold up to 10 tons of grapes for stomping. Some lagares were empty but others were filled with floating grape bunches. It was time for grape stomping!

Cynthia worried that people with foot ailments might pollute the grapes.

“The alcohol kills everything,” Phillipa assured her. (And I also read that elsewhere.)

We changed into navy shorts, washed our feet and lower legs, then climbed over the wall into the lagar.

What a weird feeling as we stepped in! The dark purple grapes and stems floated on top of the juice. I found I had to lift my feet quite high to push the grapes to the bottom. They tickled my shins as I pushed downwards, with my feet and toes acting essentially as potato mashers. My soles could feel the seeds on the bottom.

Phillipa told us the grapes had probably been picked the day before. Some smaller wineries use machines to crush the grapes because they don’t have enough labour for foot-stomping. However, machines can crush the seeds, releasing bitter tannins. That’s why foot stomping is still done for the better wines, especially port.  

“We think it gives more quality to the wine,” said Phillipa.

Grape stomping is the most fun I’ve ever had at a vineyard!

Workers are paid 35 euros per day for eight hours of picking, followed by two hours of stomping. The professionals form lines of seven to 10 people and methodically cross the lagar to crush the grapes. Musicians are part of the team; a small band of accordion, guitar, and ukelele players perform beside the lagar to inspire stompers to keep the beat. And they did so for us as well; it felt like a party atmosphere.

Grape stomping is a good aerobics workout if you’re doing it right. Of course, we tourists were not. We didn’t get into any shoving matches, like Lucy; our grape stomping was more of a free-for-all modern dance, with no organized lines. But the music did make me want to stomp to the beat. We were laughing so much I got out of breath.

We didn’t stomp long enough to complete this phase of the winemaking process: all the grapes and stems must be on the bottom, while the top should look foamier and pinker. (The skins are later used for fertilizer.) It usually takes about four days, with foot stomping for a couple of hours each day, before the juice goes on to the next phase.

And our next phase was our vineyard lunch.

I reluctantly climbed out of the lagar and admired my purple legs. Most of it rinsed off quickly with the hose, but my soles were stained purple. I tried not to think too hard about the exfoliating effect and what ended up in the grape juice. It’s all filtered, I told myself, plus there’s the alcohol. Apart from the alcohol of the wine itself, brandy is added to make port, which further ups the disinfecting factor.

We enjoyed heaps of delicious food and generous wine pairings during our breakfast and lunch.

After changing, we headed back to our table under the arbour’s dappled shade, where glasses of a crisp, dry rosé awaited us. A perfect post-stomping refreshment.

We had barely digested breakfast, but we still tucked into the bountiful harvest lunch, each course paired with a different wine. The food was delicious but not fancy – it’s what the harvesters would traditionally eat. As the meal progressed, my notes got more incoherent, but I think we had a meat stew served with excellent bread and a 2021 blended white wine that had spent eight months in barrels. We also had cod with a crumb topping, boiled new potatoes and spinach with a 2020 something red blend of three grapes: Touriga National, Tinto Tempranillo and something-or-other Franca. (Don’t trust what I have to say here.) There may have been another course. Dessert was a Portuguese version of crème caramel. And then we got into the port sampling…

We had planned to visit other quintas for tastings but had had so much wine at Pacheca that we’d hit our limit.

Grape stomping is available at several wineries in the Douro during the harvest season, roughly mid-September to mid-October (it varies year to year). Anyone who’d like to try it near the beginning or end of the season is advised to spend several days in the area, in case the harvest dates vary.

Even if you can’t get there for the harvest, the Douro is worth visiting any time. Quinta da Pacheca also offers cooking classes, picnics, winery tours, wine tastings with cheese pairings, sculpture and painting (using wine for paint!) workshops, and olive harvesting in October.

Our splendid Harvest Experience was one of the most fun days we’ve spent in Portugal, not just for all the wine and food, but also for taking part in traditional activities. We won’t soon forget our deep purple legs and the feel of grape seeds under our soles.

We stayed in a gorgeous stone villa that’s part of ArsDurium Douro Hotel, high on a terraced hill surrounded by grapevines.

We went grape stomping in September 2022. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.