How Old School Grape Crushing by Foot Makes Better Wine
Stomping away photo credit Joao Bernardino, A Wonderful Kingdom
Bladder presses and basket presses are modern, efficient, but ah, they lack the enduring romance of the original winemaking method, crushing grapes by foot, You can call it grape stomping, but the preferred term is pigeage [pronounced pih-zhee-AHGE], French for treading. By any name, though, a walk in the park it is not. And yet boutique wineries around the world still insist on it.
Why Stomp Grapes by Foot?
Pigeage “is a much gentler process, easier on the bunches and grapes,” says Megan Glaab of Healdsburg’s Ryme Cellars. “When you throw bunches in a roller or auger, it shreds up the stems.”
Crushed grape stems and grape seeds release harsh, immature tannins. “Bad for your wine,” says Mario Negreiros of Negreiros Wine in Portugal’s Douro region. “By foot is the more gentle way to smash.”
“A human foot is different than a pressure roller,” says Nate Wall, winemaker at Troon a certified biodynamic and regenerative organic vineyard in Southern Oregon. A foot and a press both exert pressure, making the grapes burst and their juice flow, but a machine can’t differentiate between a grape and a grate. Your foot can. It’s much more sensitive.
Ryme and Troon both produce vermentino and orange wines, and both do so using whole cluster fruit fermentation — grapes, stems and all. “For me, whole cluster really lends wines a savory backbone, restraint,’ says Glaab. “It adds balance.”
Stomping is a Workout
Red legs photo credit Joao Bernardino, A Wonderful Kingdom
Wall likens using whole clusters to “having different color and sizes of Legos. It can build more interesting things, adding complexity.” It can also make for vigorous pigeage. “Whole clusters are like rebar in concrete,” says Wall. “You can jump up and down.”
In fact, to do a thorough job breaking down the fruit, you have to. “It’s a great cardio workout,” says Glaab. Though the vineyard only produces 4,000 cases a year, “It’s very hard work.”
For Port production, it’s less about cardio, more about endurance. “The fermentation [period] is shorter and grapes have less time to extract what we want to extract,” says Negrieros. Pigeage occurs in wide open stone tanks called lagars large enough to accommodate a pigeage party. It’s an annual tradition, with family, friends, locals, and perhaps a tourist or two participating.
“People love it for the first 10 minutes,” says Negreiros. “This is the part that gives beautiful pictures, everybody embracing and coordinated. Someone’s singing to give the pace. It’s very nice.”
But the process takes a lot longer than 10 minutes, up to 3 days of a slow, steady march from one side of the lagar to the other and back again. “In the beginning, we’d stomp in a tank with 5 tons of grapes, 7 people for 4 hours, synchronized, like a military marching parade.” The camaraderie and coordination didn’t last nearly that long. “People think, ‘It’s boring, let’s freestyle!’” Ah, humans. What can you do?
The winery cut the pigeage to 3-hour stretches, with 15-minute breaks. Even so, by the time the wine has reached optimal sugar levels, everyone's haggard, staring off into the middle distance, their legs sore, their feet, ankles, and calves wine-stained for weeks. It’s a badge of honor.
An Honored Tradition
Stomping grapes photo credit Ryme Cellars
Documentary filmmaker Carlos Carneiros captures a whole season of the Douro’s traditional grape harvest and wine production his 2021 film, A Wonderful Kingdom. “I wanted to capture the physical beauty of the Douro, but also the physical work and sheer repetition that goes into producing wine in the traditional way,” he says. “I know there are more modern ways. I wanted to capture the old ways, the way they’ve been doing it for centuries.”
Carneiros grew up in the Douro, crushing grapes as a kid on his grandfather’s vineyard. “This was family, wasn’t a fancy thing,” he says. “Anyone who has a small plot of land would grow wine for themselves or give to the local co-op the wine of the town or region. A person can make a little bit of money.”
For the children, it was fun, “jumping and laughing.” For adults, it was “an ordeal,” he recalls. “I remember the herculian efforts of my dad and one of my uncles, seeing their muscles, the effort.”
Matty Matarazzo of Four Sisters Winery in New Jersey also remembers pressing grapes as a kid on his grandfather’s vineyard. Crush was more of a reason for extended family to gather. Matarazzo and his cousins “were 10, 11, 12 years old. They’d lift us up over the barrel to finish off what the machine didn’t do. We were in there for half an hour tops. Once we’d slipped and fallen a couple times, they made us get out.” No harm done, except perhaps to his grandfather’s wine, Matarazzo recalls it was like ketchup; red, thick and slow to pour.
An Experience for Guests
Stomping together photo credit Joao Bernardino, A Wonderful Kingdom
Matarazzo still believes pigeage offers an unparalleled opportunity for consumers to experience traditional winemaking, Four Sisters is one of several wineries offering guests a chance to crush. Twice a month, they offer the Barefoot Grape Stomp. Guests pay for a wine tasting, dinner, and of course, the stomp itself. The grapes — 30 to 40 pounds — come from winery at harvest, and from a restaurant supplier or even Sam’s or Walmart the rest of the year.
Depending on how much wine has been tasted, the stomp can turn raucous. “It’s easy for someone to slip.” Taking a tumble from a vat can be embarrassing, and possibly even catastrophic, as in the viral video, Grape Lady Falls. Four Sisters has been offering the Barefoot Grape Stomp almost since it opened in 1984. “We’ve never had an incident,” Matarazzo says with pride. As for the crushed grapes, don’t worry, they’re not used for wine. “We throw it back in the fields. It’s good organic matter.”
The Barefoot Grape Stomp is entertainment, education “and the best foot massage you’ll have in your life,” says Matarazzo. With true winemaking, pigeage isn’t so much of a spa treatment. It’s more like boot camp. At Troon, which produces about 6,000 cases a year, “each bin takes about 10 to 15 minutes to tread, there’s 8 or 9 bins, you get a 2-hour break.”
Troon grows over 20 different kinds of grapes, and Wall believes pigeage benefits every one of them. “For whites and rosés, it’s for the juice. The foot gives a lot of fruit-to-juice ratio.” Pigeage also offers control, allowing the winery to determine the degree of color and tannin in its reds, oranges and rosés. It’s a two-step process, so to speak. Pigeage breaks down the grapes, offers good skin contact, and then a press extracts all the juice. “You need to get the skin in contact with that fermenting juice. If you want your rosé to be pink, foot tread just before the press,” he says.
Troon will do pigeage once a day or up to three times a day, depending on the wine.
An autumn harvest can mean hopping into bins with up to 900 pounds of chilled fruit. “It’s very cold. You can go a little bit numb.”” says Wall. Not feeling like pigeage today? Tough. The grapes will not wait. “You only get this one chance every year.”
Sacred Practice or Science-Driven?
Jumping up and down on grapes offers a good workout, but winemakers believe the real benefit of pigeage plays out in the wine. Those Carneiros filmed in A Wonderful Kingdom “believe if you can spend the time and do it that way, it will be reflected in the end product. It makes better wine,” he says. “There’s no science to it, but filming it was incredible. You felt a solemn moment, somewhat religious extremely endearing and powerful.”
There’s some of that sense of sacredness at biodynamic Troon, too. “We’re quite a bit woo-woo,” says Wall, but he’s at heart a science guy with a background in environmental engineering. Maybe, he suggests, science just doesn’t yet have the means to measure how pigeage affects wine production. But he’ll keep doing it. “In the world of quantum mechanics, there’s observer effects, things don’t exist until a human observer sees them,” he explains. “We like foot treading because you’re physically inside the ferment. You can feel the heat rising in some areas, you can see the process.”
Whether pigeage is sacred or science-driven, Glaab’s in. “I can’t imagine ever not doing it. For me, whenever you’re physically touching the grapes, smelling, taking it all in, the better understanding you have of how best to approach the wine. We can be more connected to what we’re producing, to have our hands—and our feet— in every aspect of it.”