Amateur Wine Making - WinePress.US The Largest Home Wine Making & Grape Growing Discussion Forum on the Internet

Each year, www.WinePress.US puts on a multi day WinePress.US Winefest.

The WinePress.US Winefest locations change each year. This is done to ensure that everyone will sooner or later get a WinePress.US Winefest in their area. Also, as I understand, this event is somewhat based around people's vacations. There are many factors taken into consideration when choosing a location each year, as you can see below.

2009 WineFest Minneapolis / St. Paul, MN

2008 WineFest Sonoma County, California

2007 WineFest St. Louis, MO

2006 WIneFest Baltimore, MD

2005 WineFest Denver, CO

Plans for the 2009 WinePress.US WineFest are underway to ensure another fantastic event. Stay tuned....................

Click here for forum threads regarding the 2007 and 2008 Winefests. Some threads have photos posted by others who attended. The 2007 WinePress.US WineFest was a complete success!! Click here for photos.

Many Factors are taken into consideration when choosing a location for each WinePress.US Winefest

Well, after just being able to breathe again from a great weekend had with friends and making new ones, many ideas have been brought to me regarding the next WinePress.US Winefest. Please understand that there are many factors taken into consideration when choosing a location for a winefest.

1. Airport accessibility - This has to be a location where everyone can fly in, and preferably on a lower fare airline such as Southwest.
2. Conference space - We have to have space large enough for our needs and be able to cater our meals.
3. Hotel accommodations / price - Speaks for itself. Do they have an airport shuttle, breakfast included, Internet access? I don't want everyone spending their entire vacation budget on their hotel room. Nor do I want to spend everything on the conference space / catering to have the event.
4. Winery location / distance from hotel - Does the hotel have a shuttle we can use to get to the winery, do we have to charter a bus? How much time of the day will be spent on the bus? This takes up touring & tasting time.
5. Number of local WineMaking Shops - We need local winemaking supply shops to help promote the event and help organize the event. They need to get their local customers excited about the event.
6. Number of local Winemaking clubs - Here, I look to the local clubs for assistance in presentations, as well as getting their members interested in attending.
7. Number of local Winemakers - We could have it anywhere we want if the same 30 people are going to travel where ever we have the event, but we want to meet other local winemakers (WinePress.US members).
8. Area history or entertainment - I would like the event to be somewhere interesting. For instance, I wanted the 06 event to be held in Philly, so we could celebrate Ben Franklin's 300th birthday.. I moved it (due to PLCB liquor law issues) to Baltimore, where we had the "Inner Harbor" just minutes away. This in 2007, we had the beautiful setting of St. Charles old historic cobble stone district outside St. Louis, MO..
9. Cost - I want to keep this affordable for people to attend. I already have plans and ideas for next year, regardless where it is to reduce costs. I don't want this group, forum nor event to be for the "wine snobs". I got a lot of appreciation from over a dozen people this weekend regarding the event and how it was put together. It makes me feel good, and like the headaches and sleepless nights are all worth it.
10. Time of year - This year, our grape harvest in the St. Louis area came 3-4 weeks ahead of time. THis means that we have many of our presenters (from wineries / vineyards) who couldn't attend, nor assist with judging nor presentations. This all happended at the last minute too. I have to make sure that hotels will be available, and that there are no major conferences going on. I also have to make sure that there are no major wine conferences going on elsewhere so that we can get the mfgrs to be able to attend.

Ok, now... after thinking about all of that, and yet more... let's look at the options for the winefest... First off, I plan on reducing the total number of presentations to just one day, but having the Friday event as a full day bus tour of wineries.. So, keep that into consideration... (how many wineries are close together in each area so we don't waste an hour on the bus each time between wineries) I am also considering limiting the total number of attendees to 100 people.

Also, we'll have the wine competition as always, but we're going to add a "Wine Label" contest for wines entered into the Wine Swap. My aunt Nancy will be the judge. We won't give out medals for that, but we'll think of something.

Photos From the WineFest 2005 and results from the Wine Competition

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