If you enjoy good wine and good parties and good times, next week will be a good week.
It shocks some that San Angelo has the oldest wine and food festival in Texas, but we do, and the 29th Annual San Angelo Food & Wine Festival wraps up next week. Get ready to party.
The festival began with a gourmet dinner two months ago. Mark your 2014 calendar if you missed it. If you went, you know Chef Tre Wilcox’s food soared with wine poured and you are a better person for it.
Festival parts two and three offer chances to partake of a panoply of foods and more wines than you can taste if you spit each sip and have a designated driver.
Thursday’s Uncorked Wine & Food Pairing event features winning food from six top restaurants matched with winning wines. Held in the beautiful San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, the event is robust fun dusted with museum decorum. Then the party moves to the rooftop for music and dancing, where you catch button-down bankers bouncing to the beat. Worth the ticket. Been there, have the T-shirt. trust me.
The fest concludes Friday with the yee-haw blowout Fork & Cork Tasting, this year at the Cactus Hotel. Good food, good wine, good music, good people, good times, good gosh you should try it.
If you’re a beer person who thinks wine people are effete snobs who raise their pinkies when they take insipid sips, come and see if you still feel that way after you’ve cruised the Cactus. And if your brew bias renders you incapable of grappling with grapes, there’s a beer garden to rescue your evening. You can keep your pinkie firmly clutched to the aluminum can and no one will notice. Or care.
Visit the San Angelo Cultural Affairs Council (SACAC) website at sanangelocarts.com or call 653-6793 for information and tickets. The festival funds the council and the marvelous things SACAC does. Buy a ticket even if you cannot attend.
Recommended:
• Uncorked Wine & Food Pairing. Thursday, April 25, San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, 7 p.m. $50. Six restaurant offerings paired with fine wines. Tickets: In Vino Veritas or by phone: 653-6793 (SACAC).
• Fork & Cork Tasting Finale. Friday, April 26, Cactus Hotel, 6:30-9:30 p.m. $40. Dozen restaurants, 50-plus wines. Music by Will Taylor & Strings Attached. Tickets: Pinkie’s, Blaire’s Western Wear, In Vino Veritas.
Last round: You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy wine. That is sort of the same thing.