Wine

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In small-scale winemaking, the wine grapes are crushed by bare feet. Are these feet washed prior to crushing? Do they ever wear shoes or is it always bare feet?

All those people who say that commercial wines are never foot pressed. cannot have never seen D’Arenburg wines from Australia.

Some of their wines have a ‘foot trod’ logo on the bottles –see the Winemaking page on their website, and the info for their d’Arrys Original Grenache says "Gentle handling through the winery includes crushing through the Demoisy crusher, open fermentation with the traditional heading down boards and foot treading followed by basket pressing through the 19th century ‘Coq’ and ‘Bromley & Tregoning’ basket presses and then into almost 18 months barrel maturation in old French and American oak." – See http://www.darenberg.com.au/default2.php

Foot trod grapes are used in Port wines from Portugal and I know some wineries in South Africa that do it.

At Port winery Quinta do Passadouro – ‘The wines will continue to be made completely traditionally, "for as long as we can afford to" says Bohrmann, explaining that labour costs of foot-treading grapes are huge compared to modern presses. But Jorge Borges insists the foot can produce a uniquely soft wine style, with maximum extraction of flavour without breaking the pips and releasing bitter components.’ see http://wine-pages.com/features/passadouro.htm

I am sure they do wash their feet first but I wouldn’t worry about the feet. You shoulld see the state of the grapes, covered in all sorts of detritis. The act of fermenting will purify the juice.

In some places they wear rubber boots.

Who is the most important..?

Thanks to Toby Phillips for making this video http://tobyphillips.com/

Duration : 0:1:3

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