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Monday, May 18, 2009

A Taste of New Kent

This past Saturday (May 16), Rob and I were looking forward to spending the afternoon sipping wines from the Northern Neck region (mostly) at the (A) Taste of New Kent Wine Festival. We had never been to the New Kent Winery, but have heard very good things about it from several folks. We were also looking forward to spending the afternoon with our good friends Lillian and Sam, and Evie and Tim (although, this was the first we met of Tim, so we were just assuming he'd be a good friend - LOL).

The festival wasn't an inexpensive one - tickets purchased in advanced were $20 each. Most of the vineyards were part of the Chesapeake Bay Wine Trail (formerly the Northern Neck wine trail: http://chesapeakebaywinetrail.com/). I was also excited to know that Coopers Vineyards were going to be there, who are the makers of the wonderful Noche wine that Kerri and I enjoyed so much at the James River Wine Festival a month or so ago.

We knew it was a bad sign when we got there and had to park in the vineyards - literally.

I am still in awe over the shear number of people that were there. They had two bands that played that were very good (one was a New Orleans band - complete with accordion music, which both Rob and Evie really enjoy, and one was a Beatles cover band, who did a good job, too). There were three or four food vendors that absolutely could NOT keep up with the crowd. And what made that even worse is that the festival did not allow you to bring your own food like wineries do if you're just visiting them for tastings.

We stood in line for everything. And a number of times, we stood in line for nothing. We hardly tasted any wines - we got to taste New Kent's wines, White Fences, and maybe one other, and that's it. New Kent did a good Chardonnay; they also did a red blend called Meritage that I thought was pretty good, too. Otherwise, we bought a few bottles of wine and just shared them between the six of us.

Clearly, the New Kent Chamber of Commerce planned poorly. It would seem to me, though, that they knew how many tickets they pre-sold, so maybe they could have at least let the food vendors know. It took us 1 1/2 hours to get food that was edible.

So - what's my take? I'm not sure I'll ever do a "wine festival" again. It was way too crowded, we didn't get to taste hardly any wines, and we stood in line and waited WAY too long for expensive food. We would much rather do as we typically do - plan a day when we go to three or so wineries, pack a lunch, and enjoy the wines and the day at our leisure. The absolute best part of the day was spending time with friends. In retrospect, we could have done that a lot less expensively by each of us sharing a bottle of one of our favorite wines among friends on Evie's deck.

2 comments:

Ray said...

That is very good feedback. As a vendor I know that everyone worked very hard to plan the event. First time events typically have a few wrinkles. When food vendors come they lose money if there are too many vendors or not enough people. Some festivals don't make it past the first year because of lack of attendance. Many visitors thought that the event at New Kent Winery was a class act even if there were some hiccups. At most large festivals the attendees are mostly interested in the sampling. I hope you will still enjoy visiting Virginia wineries and events.

wiseley worded said...

I've never been to a festival, but always wanted to go. maybe I don't want to anymore. I hate crowds, especially while tasting.