Wine Festival Expands to Four Days, Strengthens Food Focus

February 16, 2010

On the tail end of the worst blizzard to hit the area in more than 100 years, this year’s 11th annual Washington D.C. International Wine & Food Festival—now lengthened to four days—got off to a delayed start when new show manager KSM Marketing canceled the kick-off reception on Thursday, scheduled to take place at PS7’s restaurant.

The next night, however, with the downtown streets still a colossal mess, more than 300 guests made their way to the headquarters of presenting festival sponsor The Washington Post for a wine and cheese reception. Thousands more turned out Saturday and Sunday at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center for the Grand Tasting ($75 to $95 per person), which included 100 wineries pouring more than 600 wines.

With platinum sponsorship by the Kingdom of Navarra (an autonomous region of Spain), this year’s tasting festival had a stronger accent on food than in past years. KSM doubled the number of food vendors and added the Street Fare Food Pavilion ($30 additional) on the balcony above the central Atrium, where guests sampled Australian lamb loin and Alaskan poached cod prepared by Reagan Building chefs.

“We’ve done a shake-up of the design and the display layout in the atrium, with a large center island for Navarra,” said show manager Kelly Morris of KSM. “Instead of a series of booths and smaller pavilions, our vision was better traffic flow with no bottlenecks.”

As in previous years, The Washington Post helmed a stage in Atrium Hall for cooking demos by local chefs, including Jose Andres of ThinkFoodGroup and Barton Seaver of Blue Ridge. Hargrove again provided general contractor services.