Charleston Wine + Food Festival

Holy Cow this weekend was CRAZY, but my favorite time of year......CHARLESTON WINE + FOOD FESTIVAL!  Going on Lucky # 7 of celebrating the best chefs and wines in one weekend and one of the best cities in America...Charleston!  If you have never experience what this weekend is all about, you need to start planning for 2013!

After wrapping up a SOAKING Wet MS Walk on Saturday morning....it was back to the apartment for me to catch a few ZZZ's before "Hitting the Streets" of Charleston at the Visitor's Center Bus Shed.

Set-Up...Before Guests Arrived

This year I had to opportunity to work with the festival's Volunteer Coordinator, Georgia Nettles, to assist as the Volunteer Captain for the Festival After Hours Event at the Bus Shed.  It consisted of a wide variety of street performers, Quiana Parler and Friends, Local Food Trucks, Restaurant "Street" Vendors, Wine & Liquor Distributors, Graffiti artists, and so much more.

Street Performers and Lots of Eatin' & Drinkin' going on!

Grant and I lucked up and found VIP passed to the Saturday evening After, After, Party!  This was an invite only event that took place at my all time favorite restaurant, FIG!  Even though we missed out on happenings, we still had a good time just being there with the "VIP's"....hahah!  We followed up this party with a stop by Halls Steakhouse to visit with an old friend of ours, Robbie, who works for Halls as the Wine Sommelier.

Sunday was spent sleeping in and catching up on as much sleep as possible before the Tasting Tents. I was offered tickets to attend and Grant was of course, working the event pouring up some wines!   It was a great time.....I met up with my friends Megan and Jennifer who "toured" the tents with me.  We went from table to table tasting wine after wine after wine, and food after food after food.  I mean, what else could you ask for!  :)

Duck Confit served with Risotto and Micro greens (I gave my duck to Jennifer ;))

And then of course we found our way to the BBQ, Blues, and Brews event at the Maritime Center down by the Aquarium.  It was a little bit chilly, but we had a great time for the short period of time that we attended.  Again, we found tickets......I have no idea how.....but we got in and enjoyed the Lowcountry Bluegrass Band the Bushels and lots and lots of BBQ.  I enjoyed the Grilled Swordfish and Macaroni and Cheese. YUM!  Cupcake also provided a Chocolate Sea Salt Cupcake that was pretty yummy. :)



All in all it was a GREAT weekend!!  Being that it rained, two out of the three days, I think we all had a great time and it was another successful year for the Charleston Wine and Food Festival.  Can't wait to get more involved for what 2013 has to bring!  See you next year. :)