For several years now I’ve attended the Decatur Wine Festival with my friends Emily (of Spatialdrift fame) and her husband, Adam.  We were back again today for more wine drinking festivities, and I thought I’d share what I’ve learned to expect from this sort of a wine festival.

To give you a little background on my wine experience, let me be clear – I’m wine illiterate.  I like going to a wine festival every once and awhile because it gives me a vast array of wines to taste, as well as a lot of knowledgeable people happy to talk about what makes their wine special and what their favorites are.  As pretentious as a wine festival sounds, I’ve always enjoyed the Decatur Wine Festival; I’ve never felt looked-down upon for lack of knowledge, and I’ve never felt out of place for lack of a monocle.

I can’t speak to all festivals, but I’ve enjoyed Decatur’s every time I’ve been.

What comes with my ticket?

When you purchase a wine festival ticket you’re buying several hours of as much wine as you can stomach.  To help you out with that, you will get a booklet with a list of all the wines and hopefully a tiny golf pencil to make notes by your favorites.  At Decatur’s festival they also give you a small wine glass in which to taste all the wine.  Others might simply have small disposable cups to drink from.

How is it set up?

Wine distributors and crafters will have tables setup in open areas with selected bottles of their products.  They do they pouring for you and are usually more than happy to answer any questions you have and give you suggestions.  Many tables will also have some sort of printed material you can pick up if you like a specific type of wine.  This year there were 69 tables and almost 500 different wines being served.

Besides bottles of wine and printed information, the tables will have water kegs and buckets for you to clean out your glass between wines.  To stave off drunkenness a little longer, once you’ve sipped your selected wine you can dump the remnants into a bucket rather than being forced to finish the entire sample, then wash your glass out with a little water and put the water into the bucket as well.

Most tables used cardboard buckets the size of a popcorn bucket as their wine-disposals, but this one below had their own fancy metal bucket.  Oh ho!

Will there be food?

Because downtown Decatur is a pretty hip-and-with-it place, all the local restaurants come out for the wine festival and have tables of their own.  While it can be tricky to juggle a plate, a wine glass, and a booklet, it’s always worth it; the food has always been delicious.  I’d assume most other wine festivals would have food as well, if for no other reason than to provide cushion for all the alcohol you’re ingesting.

This year we ate thai food from Siam Thai, Indian street food from Chai Pani, and pizza from Sapori di Napoli.  In the past we’ve also had samples from The Iberian Pig and Raging Burrito, but we didn’t move fast enough this year.  Blast!

Any final tips?

Keep your hands free!

The biggest suggestion I have for wine festival attendance is to think carefully about what you’re bringing with you.  We only heard a single wine glass break during the festival this year, but that served as a good reminder to keep your hands free.  I’d suggest that you leave your purses at home, for instance, and if you don’t need a jacket, don’t bring one so you don’t end up carrying it around.  Any additional items that might clutter up your hands mean it’s likelier you’re going to drop your wine glass or spill wine on you or someone else.  If you want to take pictures, consider it carefully – do you need your camera, or will your phone do?

Some people come prepared with a lanyard specially made to hold a wine glass; it has a little basket on the end that the cup rests in and leaves a hole for the stem.  Every year I think about how handy it would be to have one, but then I realize buying one for something I do once a year makes no sense.  But if you want to go to a lot of wine-related events, this would totally be worth your time.

Budget your time!

With 69 tables to visit in only 3 hours, we came to the realization that we needed to run through our booklet and look for anything we really wanted to try before our time ran out.  The booklet came with a handy map, so after finding the tables we wanted to see we plotted a quick course through the streets to efficiently get through the most interesting-looking bottles.

You’re drinking – be safe!

This should be pretty obvious, but you’re drinking – either designate someone DD, take a cab, or plan on walking to a restaurant for dinner while everyone sobers up.

Anything else I might see?

Well…there are a few other things you might see:

What have your wine festival experiences been like?  Hopefully as positive as mine.