Aimee Milton, of Hinton, reacts to the feeling of grapes squishing between her toes while she and Donna Weinrich stomp grapes at the Tucker Hill Vineyard in Hinton, owned by Barry and Brenda Dittmer. They helped the Dittmers harvest red grapes Sunday to make into wine -- those grapes won't be stomped by feet, though. [Click to enlarge]

All around, people are talking, laughing, and clipping away at loaded branches of grape vines.

It's Sunday and it's harvest time at Barry and Brenda Dittmers' vineyard in Hinton.

Reagan Milton, 3, had a few leftovers between her toes after stomping grapes at the Dittmers' vineyard in Hinton Sunday. [Click to enlarge]

The grapes go from vine to pail to large tubs in the back of a pickup truck. From there they are taken to the newly built winery near the Dittmer's home to be de-stemmed and sealed in plastic vats to ferment.

Within a few weeks, these piles of Fronetnac grapes will be corked into bottles of deep red wine.

Although the Dittmers planted vines more than three years ago, this is their first big harvest at Tucker Hill Vineyard. The Dittmers' vines are established now and they learned to cover the vines to keep birds away.

Pam Milton snips grapes off a vine Sunday at the vineyard owned by her sister Brenda Dittmer and Brenda's husband Barry. The grapes will be used to make red wine for the Dittmer's winery, which they hope to open this fall. [Click to enlarge]

"I think we picked 3,000 to 4,000 pounds worth of grapes today," Barry said, heaving a loaded tub of grapes from his truck to go through the de-stemming machine. "We picked some a couple of years ago, but it wasn't near this."

Friends and family members headed into the vineyard on the hillside at the south side of Hinton at about 1 p.m. and worked until suppertime clipping grapes into buckets.

"This really doesn't feel like work to me," said Jake Milton, a nephew of the Dittmers, untangling clusters of grapes from the vine.

Luke Binneboese and Barry Dittmer pour freshly harvested Frontenac grapes into a machine that separates the fruit from the stems at Dittmer's winery in Hinton. Next, the fruit will be stored in large plastic barrels to ferment into wine. [Click to enlarge]

Chris Beck, who is starting his own vineyard few miles south of Hinton, showed up for the harvest.

"I'm just helping out and getting some experience," said Beck, who works by day as a Fareway manager in Sioux City.

He and his wife Angie decided to plant 50 vines of Frotenac and Eidelweiss grapes this year, so in a few years, he hopes to see a harvest like this one.

Bode Binneboese, 3, helps Terrie Binneboese pick grapes from vines in the Dittmers' vineyard at the south edge of Hinton. [Click to enlarge]

"We had some land we weren't doing anything with," Beck said. "We'd always talked about this, so we decided to do it."

He's toured other Iowa vineyards to learn how to grow grapes in the Midwest. There are more than 50 vineyards and wineries across the Iowa.

Beck said he and Angie will probably sell their grapes to someone like Dittmer who produces wine.

Pam Rohlk, a friend of the Dittmers from Hulstein, said she enjoyed the day at the winery.

"I liked learning the process of how they actually go about making wine," she said.

The picked grapes are poured into a machine that twists the grapes from their stems and shoots them out, slightly crushed and ready to ferment. Men lifted the brimming tubs of juicy grapes into a larger plastic barrels to ferment.

Barry Dittmer added a few ingredients to the barrels and left them for a week to ferment into red wine.

The process is a little different for white wine, he explained. The green grapes will be picked in a few weeks this fall. After being de-stemmed, these grapes will be squeezed in a press to remove the juice from the pulp and skin. Then the juice will be fermented into wine.

After several loads of picked grapes Sunday afternoon, the crew piled into pickup trucks and headed back to the winery to share some food and wine.

And some grape stomping.

Four large wooden bushel baskets were filled with green grapes.

"We don't actually have people stomp on the grapes for the wine we make," Brenda said. "But we wanted to try this for fun."

A few people, including 3-year-old Reagan Milton, tried their hand -- or foot -- at stomping, and even her great-grandpa and grandma stepped into the wooden buckets for a photo.

Then Barry and Brenda Dittmer stomped a few grapes.

"Whoooo. They're squishy," Brenda laughed.

The work isn't done yet, but the Dittmers are having their first taste of what their vineyard might become.

They hope to open Tucker Hill Vineyard this fall, complete with wine tasting and their own bottled wine.

"We're thinking we'll make about 3,000 bottles this year," Barry said.

Brenda said this year's harvest crew -- about 20 people -- will be small compared to what they anticipate for the future.

"Lots of vineyards around Iowa have an annual harvest celebration," she said. "We'd like to do something like that."