Wine festival

Annual wine festivals celebrate viticulture and usually occur after the harvest of the grapes which, in the northern hemisphere, generally falls at the end of September and runs until well into October or later. They are common in most wine regions around the world and are to be considered in the tradition of other harvest festivals.

The Egyptian god Osiris was dedicated to wine, but the oldest historically documented wine festivals can be traced back to the Greek celebrations for their wine god Dionysos. The typical ingredients of a wine festival include wine drinking, grape pressing, regional foods, music and, in many areas, religious ritual.

In culture

The grape, and the extraction of its juice to produce wine, is more than a flavorsome food or drink. Both grapes and wine have immense cultural significance in many cultures, and often religious significance too.

Competitions

Food & Wine

Food & Wine is a monthly magazine published by Time Inc. It was founded in 1978 by Ariane and Michael Batterberry. It features recipes, cooking tips, travel information, restaurant reviews, chefs, wine pairings and seasonal/holiday content and has been credited by The New York Times with introducing the dining public to "Perrier, the purple Peruvian potato and Patagonian toothfish".

The premier event for the magazine is the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, Colorado. The Classic features wine tasting, cooking demonstrations, featured speakers, as well as a cooking competition. Held annually in June, the event is considered the kickoff to the Aspen summer season and celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2007.

The winner of Top Chef, the reality television cooking competition, is featured in a spread in this magazine.

History

Michael and Ariane Batterberry's early writing work on food included the 1973 book On the Town in New York, From 1776 to the Present, a culinary history of New York City that was republished in 1998 by Routledge in celebration of the book's 25th anniversary. The Batterberrys had first met an arts benefit on the roof of Manhattan's St. Regis Hotel and hadn't initially been food writers, with Michael working as a journalist and the couple working together as arts editors at Harper's Bazaar. They first conceived of the idea of writing a book about food all over the world after spending a weekend together with best-selling wine writer Hugh Johnson, who later dropped out of the writing project. The original edition of the book was described by The Washington Post as "the authoritative history of dining in the country's culinary capital". The Batterberry's saw "a big changeover at the moment we founded Food and Wine in the late 70's" from a time when "it was the little wife in the kitchen" to a period in which more men developed an interest in cooking.

Busch Gardens

Busch Gardens is the name of two amusement parks in the United States, owned and operated by SeaWorld Entertainment. The original park is in Tampa, Florida, and the second park is in Williamsburg, Virginia. There were also previously Busch Gardens parks in Pasadena, California (1905–1937), Van Nuys, Los Angeles, California (1964–1979) and Houston, Texas (1971–1973).

Busch Gardens parks were initially developed as marketing vehicles for Anheuser-Busch and featured hospitality houses with samples of Anheuser-Busch products. They also included stables that housed many of the company's Clydesdale horses, which have been associated with Anheuser-Busch since 1933. Eventually, rides and attractions were added to the parks and over time were developed into full theme parks while still promoting Anheuser-Busch. Busch Entertainment Corporation, now called SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment, was created as a subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch Companies to run the various parks in 1959.

In 2009 InBev, the new owners of Anheuser-Busch, sold the amusement parks to the Blackstone Group. Blackstone has kept some of the popular traditions including a stable with Clydesdales but those Clydesdales are not affiliated with the beer company.

Wine

Wine (from Latin vinum) is an alcoholic beverage made from fermented grapes or other fruits. Due to a natural chemical balance, grapes ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, water, or other nutrients.Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts produce different styles of wine. These variations result from the complex interactions between the biochemical development of the grape, the reactions involved in fermentation, the terroir (the special characteristics imparted by geography, geology, climate and plant genetics) and subsequent appellation (the legally defined and protected geographical indication used to identify where the grapes for a wine were grown), along with human intervention in the overall process.

Wine has been produced for thousands of years. The earliest evidence of wine to date was found in the country of Georgia, where 8000-year old wine jars were uncovered. Traces of wine have also been found in Iran with 7,000-year-old wine jars and in Armenia with the 6100-year old Areni-1 winery, which is considered to be the earliest known winery by far. The earliest form of grape-based fermented drink however, was found in northern China, where archaeologists discovered 9000-year old pottery jars. Wine had reached the Balkans by c. 4500 BC and was consumed and celebrated in ancient Greece, Thrace and Rome. Throughout history, wine has been consumed for its intoxicating effects, which are evident at normal serving sizes.

Festival

A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect of that community and its religion or traditions, often marked as a local or national holiday, mela or eid. Next to religion and folklore, a significant origin is agricultural. Food is such a vital resource that many festivals are associated with harvest time. Religious commemoration and thanksgiving for good harvests are blended in events that take place in autumn, such as Halloween in the northern hemisphere and Easter in the southern.

Festivals often serve to fulfill specific communal purposes, especially in regard to commemoration or thanksgiving. The celebrations offer a sense of belonging for religious, social, or geographical groups, contributing to group cohesiveness. They may also provide entertainment, which was particularly important to local communities before the advent of mass-produced entertainment. Festivals that focus on cultural or ethnic topics also seek to inform community members of their traditions; the involvement of elders sharing stories and experience provides a means for unity among families.