How far would you go to have a glass of wine? Would you stomp and smush grapes with your feet in order to produce juice? Would you have second thoughts with every drop that passed your lips? I have heard what can be cultured from flip flops and my first thought is, ‘heck no!’

We went to the LakeRidge Winery grape stomp and harvest festival yesterday. It wasn’t really anything to write home about. In fact I enjoyed the trip I took through the winery back in July when my girlfriends came for a visit and we did the wine tasting tour quite a bit more. The stomp is just a gimmick to get people out in greater spending exuberant numbers. They give you a few tastes among the vats and herd you through the tour in a sort of half masted way. We wandered for about five minutes through the ‘festival’ where crowds bumped and spilled wine on my flip flops for a glimpse of a few people with their pants rolled up and feet in piles of grapes before we decided to go home and have lunch.

It is a free tour and tasting worth taking most days but a regular old weekday or a Saturday would be just fine, even I might add, more enjoyable. You might even find you like the muscadine, native and locally grown grapes. They have a peculiar musky smell and a taste I find reminiscent of grape Kool-aid.