Stomping grapes for fun, a bottle of wine and purple feet

For about five minutes, they stomped and stomped the cold little grapes.

And though in the end "Stomp the Vineyard" barely made any juice at all, the team created just enough to be declared the winner in the first heat in the Grape Stomp at Seattle's annual Italian Festival at Seattle Center.

"The grapes were really cold," said team member Neha Nariya. "But it was fun."

The Grape Stomp -- in which three team members try to create more juice than other teams by stomping on grapes -- is an annual tradition at the 21-year-old festival.

The festival is a two-day celebration of Italian culture and food that includes cooking demonstrations and continues Sunday.

In previous grape stomping contests, there were multiple heats and an overall grape stomping champion, said festival director Dennis Caldirola, but nobody wanted to stomp on grapes multiple times.

So, several years ago, organizers decided to declare one winner per heat and no overall champion.

The winning teams end up with one bottle of wine per person. The losers depart with nothing but cold feet, colored a ghastly shade of purple from all the grapes they've stomped.

Once produced, the juice is considered so nasty that it's just thrown away, Caldirola said.

Some teams have been returning to the festival to participate in the stomp for years and have odd strategies such as wearing socks during the stomping.

But many, like "Stomp the Vineyard," are making their first appearance.

Members of other teams said they had prepared for the event, some by "drinking a lot of wine." "Stomp the Vineyard" hadn't prepared much at all, but its three members appeared confident going in to the contest.

They stomped and stomped in the wooden barrels, loudly squishing the grapes. Somehow, they avoided squirting juice into the audience, though viewers were warned they could get splashed by bits of grape and juice.

At the end of their efforts, the stompers used a plastic hose to pour the juice from the wooden barrels into transparent plastic jugs to the cheers of the audience.

"Stomp the Vineyard," of course, got the loudest cheer and the satisfaction that it had created a fair-amount of juice, albeit mixed with foot lint.

The team members described themselves as young professionals in their mid-20s and said they had decided to enter the contest for fun, never expecting that they might actually win their heat.

You never forget your first time stomping grapes, they said.

"The truth is that we popped our grapes today," said team member Matt Waran.