Stomp Them Grapes At Henscratch Winery

It's a little acreage on Henscratch Road, between Lake Placid and Sebring. You gotta know how to get there to get there.

But the 8th annual Henscratch Winery Grape Stomp draws people from everywhere. Look at the car tags in the grassy field that serves as a temporary parking lot: Polk, Palm Beach and Hernando. There was a tour bus from Broward County.

"We usually draw 1,200 to 2,000 people," said Johanne Lauchman, who sold Henscratch Farms Vineyard last month to Drew Jones, and is staying on to help as a trainer.

And in the center of the farm is the reason why people pay $6 to come: a vat of green muscadine grapes. Shuck your flip-flops, David Flowers will rinse your feet, jump right in, and do the "I Love Lucy."

Deb Pedone's face scrunched up as she walked around the steel trough.

"It feels like a knuckle massage," said the Brooksville woman. "It's like a lot of marbles, or worms, or something."

"Were they mushy? No," said Nancy Pass, also from Brooksville, who was talking to the woman next in line. "They were hard, and they gushed between your toes. It's fun."

The point, for Henscratch and Elaine Bryant of Lake Placid, is that for a mere $12.99, people can purchase the wine they stomped from the Cracker Country Store. Vintage 2008. Save it for a few years. It'll mature.

At 11 a.m. Saturday, it was already steamy hot, but under the big tent, there were a hundred tourists cooling their heels, listening to the California Toe Jam Band crooning to that tender opus, "Wooly Bully."

And just a few feet away, there were authentic Florida outhouses.

Jeez, is this the real Florida, or what?