BLOOMSBURG, Pa. — You can hear the crowds cheering inside the Keystone Agriculture Center at the Bloomsburg Fair. It's all for the annual grape stomping competition. Before the Keystone Agriculture Center was here, it was an old farm museum. Staff wanted to do something different to draw more people in.
"I wanted to make sure there was, you know, some old alternate type things, like the grape stomp we have grape juice tasting for the kids, so that's really where those things started to develop, to try to do some educational and some more things, instead of just having a wine tasting," said Brian Campbell superintendent of agriculture at the Bloomsburg Fair.
People come from all over to watch radio personalities, commissioners, and even television reporters, like Newswatch 16's Mackenzie Aucker, try their skills.
"All kinds of theories and thoughts, you know, somebody's gonna go real fast, and whatever, really, you just got to get that grape squished and get the juice out of it. We'd like to do something to get the juice out a little easier. We're always, you know, moving the seeds and the pulp away from it," said Campbell.
720 pounds of grapes are used throughout the nine-day competition. The fruit is sourced from local wineries, such as Red Shale Ridge Vineyards in Schuylkill County.
"We grow our own grapes; we are PA Preferred. What we don't grow at our winery, we get from some other local wineries; we buy from Benigna Creek, our neighbor winery, and Stone Mountain in Pine Grove," said Denine Stutzman, assistant manager of Red Shale Ridge Vineyards.
The winery has been set up at the fair for five years. Workers have seen many people come through after the grape stomping competition to try free samples of their wine.
"We get people from out of the area that don't typically come, you know, to the winery, and they see us here, and then they'll come down there," said Stutzman.
You can catch the last two grape stomping competitions at the fair on Friday and Saturday in Columbia County.