Stompin' for wine

Teams crush grapes for contest, are judged on style

BY EMILY ANDERSON
OF THE JOURNAL STAR

EDWARDS - Charles Bush and Nancy Heaton didn't know each other Saturday when they stepped into a vat of grapes and stomped their way to victory. But by the end of the day they were sharing a bottle of wine.

Bush and Heaton won the bottle of Kickapoo Creek Winery's Sun Kiss white wine when they came from Edwards and Pekin, respectively, to make wine with their feet in a grape stomp contest at the winery. Not wanting to compete alone, the two strangers and a pair from Washington jumped into the vat together and beat out two other teams.

The teams competed one at a time in a single vat of grapes and were judged on style. The crowd voted by cheering the loudest for their favorite teams in a roll call at the end of each grape stomp competition.

Bush said he "stepped in style," but mostly just tried to maintain his balance.

"I used the jump and stabilize method," Bush said.

The winery decided to have a grape stomp to copy other wineries and emulate quite possibly the most famous grape stomp ever captured on television in an episode of "I Love Lucy."

Bush had seen the episode of the classic 1950s sitcom but still wasn't sure what to expect when he stepped into the pile of grapes that just covered the bottom of the vat's floor. He soon found "it was slippery and dewey."

Grapes were thrown into the vat, stems and all. Instead of acting as a prickly nuisance, Heaton said the stems were a blessing.

"The stems were the only thing that gave you traction," Heaton said. "Without the stems, it would have been very slippery."

Bush, Heaton and all the other winners in the half-hourly grape stomps won a free bottle of wine. Otherwise, the fruits of their labor went for naught. The contents of the grape vat were dumped at the end of the day.

Stephanie Harrison and Tammi Christensen, of Peoria, and Brandi Stanley, of East Peoria, lost to Bush and Heaton in the 1:30 p.m. contest but came back to take the 2 p.m. round.

"After we didn't win the first one we knew we needed to step it up," Harrison said after the win.

The trio stepped it up and kicked it up - punting grapes onto each other's pants and performing a can-can dance in the vat. Stanley said the flashy strategy was what wowed the crowd.

"The 'Rockette stomp' was I think what did it," Stanley said.

A Lucy and Ethel look-alike contest was also planned for the event, but only three contestants competed and all work at the winery.

"Next year come back dressed up," the winner, Jane Schmitt, told the crowd.

Schmitt works in the winery's tissue culture lab. She donned a white blouse, blue skirt, plaid apron and babushka to mimic Lucille Ball's look in the famous wine-stomping episode of "I Love Lucy." Schmitt said she's always been a big fan of the show and was surprised more people didn't enter the contest.

"There are so many crazy people in Kickapoo. Some of the older gals in Kickapoo would've been great (Lucy and Ethels)," Schmitt said.

Emily Anderson can be reached at 686-3114 or eanderson@pjstar.com.