The post Preview of the Discover Wine Festival appeared first on Texas Wine Lover.
Gloria and I live in Houston and in recent years, we have volunteered and attended quite a few wine festivals. Unfortunately, the wine festivals in the city of Houston have been underwhelming and I documented the history of one particular festival previously on this website. A few years ago, we attended the version of that festival which included Texas wineries and we really enjoyed ourselves. Unfortunately since that time, the festival has had problems and has not included Texas wineries. One winery even recently told me they are still owed money from that one year they were included, which was shocking to me.
Not understanding why the fourth largest city in the United States could not put on a successful wine festival, Gloria and I set out to try to rectify that. We may fail too, but we are going to give it a good shot. We found a great partner in David Skinner, owner of Clear Creek Winery, who wondered the same thing about a Houston wine festival as we did.
David had a contact who has held recent successful music festivals in Houston called the Springboard South music festival. Hundreds of bands have played at the music festival and this year is no exception. The three day music festival will be held from June 19 to 21, feature over 150 bands of different genres on six stages, and they are expecting over 5,000 people per day to attend.
By partnering with the music festival, we had some help in getting a location, festival activities, and so forth. We are going to be a wine festival inside a music festival! Best of all, wine festival attendees will have access to all the Springboard South music stages.
The next thing we needed to do was come up with a name for the wine festival, and we made sure the word Houston was not part of the name so people will not think there was an affiliation with past wine festivals. The other priority was that Texas wineries had to be involved. After all, we write about Texas wine! We came up with Discover Wine Festival because some people are not aware that Texas even makes wine, so what better way for them to discover Texas wine?
But would Texas wineries come to Houston for a wine festival, especially if they had a bad experience last time? That was the responsibility of Texas Wine Lover to find out that answer and the response was overwhelming! So there was definitely interest, but being the first year for the wine festival, we had to unfortunately limit the number of Texas wineries who could attend.
The Springboard South music festival will be held for three days, but the Discover Wine Festival will only be held one day, Saturday, June 20, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. The location for the wine festival will be adjacent to Warehouse Live in Houston, which is near George R. Brown Convention Center. At first we thought, “Boy, it’s going to be hot in June!”
But then we discovered (see what I did there?) that we would be in an air-conditioned tent! The tent is more like a portable building so the comfort of tasting great Texas wines will be enjoyable. One side of the large tent will be the wine festival while the other side will have a music stage where live music will be playing, so attendees get the best of both worlds.
I could ramble on because we are so excited, but the 1st Annual Discover Wine Festival will be held on Saturday, June 20th, in Houston, Texas. 19 Texas wineries will be present showcasing their wines to all attendees, and some will be coming all the way from Grapevine, the Hill Country, and Hye (near Fredericksburg).
Please see various social media for more information including, of course, how to buy tickets to the festival. There will soon be volunteer signups available so you can help the Texas wineries pour wine at the festival. Here are the different places where you can find out more about the Discover Wine Festival:
http://www.discoverwinefestival.com
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/DiscoverWineFestival
Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1418792521773137
Twitter: @DiscoverFest
Volunteers are needed to help all the Texas wineries pour wine. Please see the sign up form to volunteer!
If you are a business who is interested in sponsorship at the Discover Wine Festival, please see the Sponsors page on the website.
Tell all your friends, Share the event and page on Facebook, and we will see you at the 1st Annual Discover Wine Festival!
The post Preview of the Discover Wine Festival appeared first on Texas Wine Lover.