It’s called the Rocky Mountain Wine & Food Festival, but there’s more to it than that.
The festival, which runs Nov. 8-9 at the Edmonton Convention Centre, will have samples of great food and vintages from around the world, but it will also feature distillers, brewers and makers. Sure, wine and gourmet food are still major focuses, but the show has grown to embrace the cocktail craze and the need to showcase local brewers.
In fact, for a beer-maker like Cole Boyd of Bent Stick Brewing, this festival may be a better opportunity to get people to know his brews than the beer-specific festivals we see in Edmonton over the summer months.
But why would something that’s sold as a wine fest be a great place for an Edmonton brewery? It’s because when there’s wine and whiskey involved, a connoisseur vibe is in the air — but, at beer festivals, it can simply be a case of beer ticket, pound it back, beer ticket, pound it back.
Bent Stick just participated in the sister wine and food festival in Calgary.
There were various wines, whiskeys and tequilas, rums and things like that,” Boyd says. “There was a fair bit of sake and soju — that seems to be a bigger, newer sort of trend. And then there were the local breweries.
“It’s a little bit different from the beer fests, where it’s all beer focused, and people are just focused on getting the next beer as fast as possible. Because you get a bit more of a diverse alcohol consumer, we get a little more time with the guests, and tell them about the beer and have those kinds of conversations that tend to result in people purchasing our beer, as opposed to someone trying to get the cheapest drunk, as quick as they can.”
And it’s a good story. Now established on Happy Beer Street in south Edmonton, Bent Stick has come a long way from being a small-batch “nanobrewery” out on Fort Road. And, it’s bringing its beer to Albertans through some out-of-the-box thinking, including a new House Beer, an English pub-style ale that is being sold at curling rinks throughout the province. And, Bent Stick is getting set to release both a Belgian Christmas ale and a gingerbread brown ale for the holiday season.
“We’re trying to get our beer in spots where people can drink in a community,” says Boyd. “We want to make sure we make beer that people can drink amongst friends.”
Box’d YEG, which curates charcuterie boards, makes cheese and meat (and candy) gift boxes, and does grazing tables for parties and special events, will participate in the festival for the second year running.
Owner and charcuterie curator Rehana Farouk creates cheese and meat plates that pair well with wine, so being at the show just makes sense.
“It’s one of the most perfect places to showcase our business,” says Farouk. “You get so many different types of wine and we get to choose things that pair really well with all of those options. We get to pick different cheeses, we hand-select everything for the festival. We know that you’re trying a bunch of different reds, or a bunch of different whites. But you’ll know what you get from the Box’d booth will pair perfectly with a lot of the things you’re trying.”
But not only will Box’d have charcuterie samples on hand, it will also feature “candy shooters,” which Farouk thinks will go well with some of the spirits on offer.
“It goes really well with different fun kinds of drinks you’ll find there. It’s a shooter glass that has different kinds of sour and sweet gummies and candies and things like that.”
Farouk says she was “blown away by the local support” at the previous year’s festival. And, to get Box’d YEG into the brains of people who will soon be looking to book office parties, or looking for trays they can bring to parties or give as gifts, it’s a no-brainer to say yes for a second year.
But, in the busy time of year, the best way to book Box’d is to give about six weeks notice.
“It’s never too early to book,” she says.
