Brent Fraser high-fives a Creare coworker at the Post Mills Airport in Post Mills, Vt., on Oct. 24, 2016. Fraser was attempting to set world records related to catching grapes. (Valley News- Sarah Priestap) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. 
 
 As Brian Boland, left, waits to lift his hot air balloon into the air, Brent Fraser, of Lebanon, N.H., hands three containers of grapes to his friend and coworker Tristan Ramey, who was tasked with dropping the grapes from the balloon at the Post Mills Airport in Post Mills, Vt., on Oct. 24, 2016. (Valley News- Sarah Priestap) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. 
 
 Brent Fraser of Lebanon, N.H., keeps his eye on the falling grape as he attempts to catch it in his mouth after being dropped from a hot air balloon at the Post Mills Airport in Post Mills, Vt., on Oct. 24, 2016. His friend and coworker at Creare in Hanover, N.H., Danny Micka, holds the end of a rope used to measure the hot air balloon's distance. (Valley News- Sarah Priestap) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. 
 
 After Brent Fraser, of Lebanon, N.H., sucessfully caught a grape from a hot air balloon at 101 feet, Fraser's coworkers, Jed Wilbur, left, and Danny Micka, both engineers at Creare, measure and document the catch to submit to the Guinness Book of Wold Records at the Post Mills Airport in Post Mills, Vt., on Oct. 24, 2016. (Valley News- Sarah Priestap) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. 
 
 After catching a grape dropped from a hot air balloon at 75 feet, Brent Fraser, of Lebanon, N.H., stands with the grape still in his mouth as his friends and coworkers from Creare in Hanover, N.H., Danny Micka (center), and Jed Wilbur, right, measure the distance of the grape to the ground at the Post Mills Airport in Post Mills, Vt., on Oct. 24, 2016. (Valley News- Sarah Priestap) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. 
 
 Brent Fraser, left, celebrates along with his friend and coworker Danny Micka after Fraser caught a grape in his mouth dropped from a hot air balloon at 101 feet at the Post Mills Aiport in Post Mills, Vt., on Oct. 24, 2016. (Valley News- Sarah Priestap) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. 
 
 Danny Micka, left, Christian Hallstrom, and Jed Wilbur, all engineers from Creare in Hanover, N.H., launch a grape across the runway at the Post Mills Airport in Post Mills, Vt., to their colleague Brent Fraser, who was attempting to catch it in his mouth on Oct. 24, 2016. (Valley News- Sarah Priestap) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. 
 
 A hot air balloon flown by Brian Boland floats at 100 feet as Brent Fraser attempts to set a world record by catching grapes in his mouth dropped from above at the Post Mills Airport in Post Mills, Vt., on Oct. 24, 2016. (Valley News- Sarah Priestap) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. 
 
 Brian Boland, left, begins his flight up to 75 and 100 feet in the air with Tristan Ramey, a coworker of Brent Fraser's at Creare in Hanover, N.H., who was tasked with dropping the grapes for Fraser to catch at the Post Mills Airport in Post Mills, Vt., on Oct. 24, 2016. (Valley News- Sarah Priestap) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. 
 
 Valley News Staff Writer 
 
 Post Mills — Setting the world record for using your mouth to catch a grape dropped from the greatest height: It was a dream years in the making, and all it took was a hot air balloon, walnut-sized fruits shipped specially from Georgia and a crew of Ph.D.-level engineers who gathered at a tiny Vermont airport before the sun rose on Monday morning. 
 
 The man with the plan was Brent Fraser, 35, who said he “just had a natural knack” for catching things in his mouth ever since his high school days in Barre, Vt., where buddies would chuck food toward him in the school parking lot. 
 
 “I was a bit of a show-off,” recalled Fraser, a Lebanon resident and human resources administrator at Creare, a Hanover-based engineering firm. 
 
 Things got real after college, when his wife took him to see Blue Man Group. 
 
 “In the show, they were throwing marshmallows at the crowd trying to get people to catch it, and nobody was catching it, but then they threw one at me and I caught it,” Fraser said. “And the blue man was a little surprised, so he threw another one, and I caught it.” 
 
 After this went on for a few more marshmallows, “I was like, hey, I think I kind of have something,” Fraser said. 
 
 A YouTube search for “grape catching” led him down a rabbit hole of videos, ultimately inspiring him to try to set two records — for grape-catching height and distance — as kept by Guinness World Records, based in London. 
 
 Nobody has set an official record for the Guinness category of “greatest height catching a grape in the mouth,” but the organization requires a minimum 30-foot attempt. 
 
 After talking to someone who said he did 74 feet, Fraser decided to shoot for 75 feet on the first height attempt, and more than 350 feet for similar reasons on the distance. 
 
 He sent application paperwork to Guinness in 2010, and a few years later contacted the Post Mills Airport’s Brian Boland, no stranger to oddities and record-breaking. 
 
 Boland, the airport’s owner-operator whose museum there includes the famous 25-foot-tall wooden Vermontasaurus, piloted the ride for a man who completed the most lunges in a hot air balloon in 1992. 
 
 And separately, he was part of the team who built and briefly flew the world’s largest hot air balloon in Massachusetts, some 200 times bigger than the one flown on Monday morning, among other records. 
 
 Boland agreed to Fraser’s request, but the project was delayed for years when Fraser and his wife, Jessica, had their son, and Fraser later broke his leg. 
 
 In the meantime, the engineers got involved. 
 
 Fraser had been practicing with a three-man slingshot, but some of his Creare colleagues, taking a break from their work on jet engines, deemed it too inconsistent, jotting down some simple math and using two-by-fours to build something more reliable. 
 
 “It’s kind of diabolical,” Fraser said on Monday morning, shortly before things kicked into gear. 
 
 He paused. 
 
 “That one’s probably going to hurt the most.” 
 
 Indeed, once things did get going, most of the few dozen attempts ended with a goggle-clad Fraser getting smacked in the face and chest by the large grapes — selected because they were easiest to see — that were traveling about 56 mph. 
 
 This led to good-natured hoots and guffaws from his wife, 4-year-old son Colin and the four Creare engineers on hand. 
 
 “How much did they hurt?” one of the engineers, Tristan Ramey, asked at one point. 
 
 “So bad,” Fraser told her. “I felt like I was being punched in the face.” 
 
 The distance record with the slingshot, used later in the morning, didn’t work out. 
 
 By that point, the engineers said, the grapes had become too mushy, compromising their velocity. 
 
 They plan to try the distance attempt again some other time. 
 
 But earlier, just as the sun began to rise, Ramey stood in the balloon basket with Boland, dropping the grapes from a wooden spoon, while the other three engineers filmed the event and controlled the tethered balloon from the ground, using the rope as both an anchor and a measuring stick. 
 
 It only took a few tries at 75 feet before Fraser shot his hands up triumphantly — but he wanted three digits, he said. 
 
 After an extended round of grape-pelting to the face, he caught one from 101 feet. 
 
 He’ll send the information and videos to Guinness for the world record to be confirmed, which he expects could take about four to five weeks. 
 
 “I really wanted 100 feet,” he said. “So to get 101 was really cool.” 
 
 The whole episode was wrapped up by 8:15 a.m. 
 
 Fraser, most of his face stained in purple grape juice, had to get to work to interview a prospective employee by 9 a.m. 
 
 Maggie Cassidy can be reached at mcassidy@vnews.com or 603-727-3220. 

 The longest distance for a grape thrown and self caught in the mouth is 21.18 m (69 ft 6 in) and was achieved by AJ Henderson (USA) on the set of 'Guinness World Records Unleashed' in San Pedro, California, USA, on 11 July 2013. 
 
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 All records listed on our website are current and up-to-date. For a full list of record titles, please use our Record Application Search. (You will be need to register / login for access) 
 
 Comments below may relate to previous holders of this record.
– Since at least high school, Brent Fraser has had a "natural knack" for catching things in his mouth. The odd skill has finally paid off. Fraser, 35, has apparently claimed the world record for the "greatest height catching a grape in the mouth" at 101 feet, reports the Valley News, though Guinness World Records still needs to confirm the feat, which could take weeks. While the world record for the longest self-thrown grape catch is a distance of 69.5 feet, no one had ever attempted to seize a record for the highest catch, so the New Hampshire resident decided to be first. Using walnut-sized grapes dropped from a hot air balloon at an airport in Thetford, Vt., Fraser succeeded Tuesday in catching one dropped from 75 feet, then another from 101 feet. "I really wanted 100 feet, so to get 101 was really cool," says Fraser, who only realized the extent of his talent while seeing the Blue Man Group as an adult. "In the show, they were throwing marshmallows at the crowd trying to get people to catch it, and nobody was catching it," he says. "Then they threw one at me and I caught it." Then he caught another. Fraser now hopes his skill will nab him another world record soon: He's tried to beat the world record for the greatest distance grape catch in the mouth using a sling slot—a video shows a man succeeding at over 354 feet—but has so far failed. Getting pummeled with grapes hurt "so bad," he says. "I felt like I was being punched in the face." (This odd record involves a very long pizza.)