Went to Urban Wine Experience(UWX) 5 today. Urban wineries are wineries that don’t own any vineyards, instead they purchase grapes from growers and make wines. It was the best yet.

What I enjoy about wine festivals is that you get to try a bunch of wineries without driving all over the place. UWX was 18 wineries. There were 53 wines available to try. We tried 28.

We’ve been to a lot of wine festivals, but today was the first time we were rigorous about trying whites before reds. Lots of good food and food/ wine pairings, which is always nice. I was also pretty good about using dump buckets which kept me from reaching the tipping point. Found a few gems.

Here are my wine festival do’s and don’ts;

1. Do pace yourself
2. Do sip and spit, or use the dump buckets – especially wines you don’t care for.
3. Do try wineries and/or wines you haven’t tried before
4. Do take a break to enjoy the food and/ or music. It’s not a race.
5. Do stay hydrated.
6. If possible – start with white wines, then move on to reds – or if you just want reds, start with Pinot Noir or other lighter red before moving on to heavier reds.
7. Don’t feel like you need to try every wine because you paid for it.