After the events with Paula Deen this week... Which food network star has upset you

[jmowreader]

48. The part of my family that makes wine, uses a washboard

I have a rather large contingent of Italians in my family tree, direct from Calabria in the old country. When they emigrated to the United States, they brought all the possessions they could fit in the wine barrel...so this thing must be 150 years old, at least. Anyway, if you manage to get it one year, it comes with the washboard they use to break the skins on the grapes. (We don't squeeze the grapes to extract the juice; we break the skins, throw the grapes and whatever small amount of juice happens to escape during the skin-breaking into the barrel, and let the weight of the grapes crush the ones on the bottom.)

Before washboards were invented, the Puccis would mash the grapes with their hands, once again just to break the skins.

Then came Uncle Skip and his winery...when he decided to start making dago red for money (okay, he didn't call it that but how else do you describe a winery that only makes zinfandel, the standard dago red grape?) he bought a hydraulic press and got written out of at least three Puccis' wills.