Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Vancouver International Wine Festival - tickets now on sale and going fast! Don't miss it! Feb 24 - Mar 2, 2014

UPDATE - 7 events already sold out!  

Vancouver International Wine Festival - best wine event in North America - starts soon 


Wine tasting at Vancouver International Wine Festival - Andrew Chin photo
UPDATE: The Vancouver International Wine Festival is reporting that seven events for this year's big bash have already sold out just days after tickets went on sale!

Those events include: #1: Nothing But Burgundy, #2: Dine Italia, #3: 25 Under $25, #4: Viva Espana, #5: Insatiable Rhone. Those are some of the best dinners with wine principals in attendance, sadly, but there area still lots of great events - don't delay is my strong advice!

ORIGINAL POST

It's Vancouver International Wine Festival time - and this year with France as the theme country - and a global focus on bubbly!  

Tickets are now on sale for Canada's biggest and best wine and food event - and I'm looking forward to attending for my 24th year in a row!

The Festival has grown from humble roots in 1979 with a single winery - Robert Mondavi - to 178 wineries from 14 countries, attracting 23,000 participants to 54 events over eight days.

About 780 different wines will be available for tasting at the Festival Tasting Room events, with another 800 wines featured in a multitude of other special events during the  35th annual Festival!

If you have never been and love or even like wine, you simply have to go!  

The four major tastings are a great place to start - Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday afternoon - a new event - and of course the big Saturday night tasting - which sells out early.   

Tickets are available for each tasting at $89 each - or just $80 if you buy for a group of 10 or more - and believe me, you will more than get your money's worth from the excellent wines served.

My suggestion is simple - go Thursday night, when attendance is guaranteed to be about 30% less than Friday or Saturday - and you will see me there!  


Bill Tieleman - the Wine Barbarian - at Le Comptoir in Paris, 2013


It's a much better opportunity to talk to the principals of wineries - that's one of the stipulations of the Festival - you have to have a key staff member, from winemaker to owner - in attendance.  And Thursday night is simply less crowded and more congenial.

But there is an enormous range of other wine events - from as little as $30 to as much as $395 a ticket - and from fine dining dinners to hour long specialty tastings.

And - perhaps best of all - you can purchase wines tasted at the Festival that are not otherwise available anywhere.  [That said, you can be disappointed when the single case of wine shipped in disappears before you even arrive, sadly.]  

Whatever you do - don't miss the opportunity to expand your wine knowledge and your horizons - by attending some of the Vancouver International Wine Festival events.


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