Yadkin Valley Wine Festival - 2006
The Tribune News Articles
The 5th Annual Yadkin Valley Wine Festival was held on Saturday, May 20, 2006 at the Elkin Municipal Park in Elkin, North Carolina. The Festival, sponsored by the Elkin/Jonesville Chamber of Commerce, was attended by more than 10,000 people including some 2,500 who tasted wine poured by some of the eighteen wineries and vineyards who participated in this year's event. The following articles, published in the Elkin/Jonesville Tribune on Monday May 22, 2006, are reprinted with permission of the publisher.
Vintage Variety
Crowd lifts glasses for record-breaking fifth Yadkin
Valley Wine Festival
by Brook R. Corwin, Staff Reporter
The Tribune
Article ©2006 by The Tribune, reprinted with permission
Some came out of curiosity. Some out of
tradition. Some for a clue on how to start their own
vineyards. For a multitude of reasons, some 10-15,000 people made
Elkin their destination Saturday afternoon, tasting the fruits of a
record breaking Yadkin Valley Wine Festival.
In its fifth annual installment, the festival at
Elkin Municipal Park attracted its largest number of wine taster yet,
with 2,500 people purchasing tickets. The total is up more than 25
percent from last year's turnout. The festival if free to those
not tasting wine.
The attendees, who came from across the state and
country and from as far away as South Africa, had more choices than ever
at this year's festival. There were 18 vineyards and wineries
pouring their wine, three more than last year, while retail and food
vendors also eclipsed last year's totals.
"It really shows the diversity of North
Carolina, to see all the different kinds of wine it has," said Dan
Emmons of Mooresville, one of the festival's new attendees. Emmons
traveled to Elkin as a birthday outing for his girlfriend, Becky
McDermitt. The two have visited vineyards in Europe and make their
own wine using grape concentrates, but Saturday was their first full
taste of what the Yadkin Valley has to offer. "It's been such
an excellent experience just to see so many different people who enjoy
the art of making wine," McDermitt said. "We've made so
many new friends already."
Word of mouth interest in area wines is what the
festival chairman, Joe Walker, credited for the increased turnout.
Organizers estimated total attendance based on number of tasting tickets
sold and cars parked. "We're getting a very good reputation
as a young appellation," Walker said Sunday. "People
come, they're impressed, and they go back and tell more people about
it."
Buzz about local wines is what spurred Kelly Rayle
and Joselyn Todd to make the trip from Cary to attend their first wine
festival. "We've been exploring North Carolina wines, so we
thought we'd check this out," Todd said. "It's nice
because you get to taste lots and lots of different types of wine.
Even just Chardonnay, there's 15 different kinds."
Like many attendees, Todd and Rayle also praised the
festival's non-wine features, including live music, a grape stomp and
dozens of food and retail vendors. The Band of Oz kept the dance
floor busy with three 50-minute sets of classic beach music. They
were preceded by local rockers the Jamie Carroll Band, who went through
much of their back catalog to fill two 90-minute sets. After the
show, Carroll, an area resident, said the upbeat atmosphere inspired an
extended performance the band hopes to release on a CD. But first,
Carroll was off to sample some of his favorite wines from Windy Gap and
Shelton Vineyards.
Several vineyard owners said turnout and sales were
strong as usual for the festival, with many tasters taking an extended
interest in the product and even purchasing in bulk.
"Anytime you can be selling cases, that's
great," Tim Doub, owner of Flint Hill Vineyards, at the festival
for the first time, said immediately following the festival.
"And there's lots of exposure, which i what it's all about for
us."
Weather warmed up to the high 70s with mostly sunny
skies, making for a much better day then organizers feared when rain
drenched the park's grounds overnight.
"I was getting really nervous there,"
Walker said of watching rain fall at 7 a.m. "We kind of kept
our fingers crossed, prayed a little, and it worked out."
Walker thanked the more than 100 volunteers who started arriving at 6:30
a.m. and worked throughout the day to make the festival run
smoothly. Many were also instrumental in planning the even, a
process that will begin anew this week when ways to improve festival are
discussed by next year's organizing committee.
On the agenda will likely be ways to expand the
festival grounds to make room for more vineyards. In addition to
the 18 pouring, two vineyards had booths set up - with Grassy Creek
Winery giving away a free case of wine to tasters each hour - and will
likely have enough wine bottled to pour next year.
"We definitely have room to keep spreading
out," Walker said. "We'll just need to improve our sound
system and our layout." The festival has already expanded
considerably since it began in 2002, at a time when less than half the
wineries now pouring had yet to start bottling.
"It's a lot larger than it was back then,"
said Rick Darnell of Winston-Salem, who was attending the festival for
the fourth time.
In the future, the festival may have to make room for
new vineyard owners like Justin Boaz of Pilot Mountain. Boaz got
his first sip of a wine festival experience Saturday, all the while
learning of the regional success he hopes to emulate. "I just
started planting my first grape vines," Boaz said. "Here
I'm getting lots of great ideas."
Fine Finish
Organizers deserve praise for year-long efforts that
culminated in a record-breaking Yadkin Valley Wine Festival
by Rebel Good, Editor
The Tribune
Article ©2006 by The Tribune, reprinted with permission
The early numbers from this weekend's Yadkin
Valley Wine Festival demonstrate that it is a growing, well-attended
showcase event, even after just five years, and that many thousands here
back winemaking as more than an economic partner, they're also welcoming
it into the area's culture.
This festival, just the fifth, bested last year's
figures for numbers of wineries, merchants and wine tasters - the latter
being up most conspicuously, 2,500 this year versus last year's 2,000,
also a record.
Still, it bears repeating that most who attend are
not wine consumers. They've come for the food or the shopping, or
the live entertainment. Is a wine event meaningful if most don't
drink the wine? Absolutely it is, because that attendance shows
people support the industry, even if they don't consume its products,
and are grateful for what it's doing for the image and the cultural
growth of the area.
This is the Yadkin Valley Chamber of Commerce's
single largest project, requiring a year-round commitment. Though
it has been successful year after year, it is not the kind of
too-big-to-fail even that succeeds if enough people show up and the
managers follow an instruction manual. The Chamber puts a
considerable amount of creativity and innovation into planning the
event. Its leadership structure is strong enough that the
unexpected, and unfortunate, departure of it's president did not
jeopardize the wine festival's success at all.
We than them, the event's sponsors, vendors,
winemakers and, foremost, its visitors, for creating another weekend
that projects the Yadkin Valley as a unique and significant part of this
state and the country.
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