A weird year indeed for Winnipeg Wine Festival(s)

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/09/2024 (713 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When the Winnipeg Wine Festival rolled out its full slate of events (the more intimate “Wine Down” ancillary events and the behemoth weekend public tastings) in January, it all felt a little bit… weird.

After the festival was postponed and then cancelled in 2020 (and cancelled in 2021) owing to the COVID pandemic, it returned in a mostly normal format in fall 2022. Then, just as it was about to come back in full force in autumn 2023, the Liquor Marts work stoppage that summer saw the 2023 festival postponed to January 2024.

Which meant, with the 2024 festival going ahead as per normal on Sept. 20 and 21, that for the first time there’d be two Winnipeg Wine Festivals in one calendar year.

Attendance at the January festival, with wines of Argentina as its theme, was surprisingly decent given the deep freeze of a Winnipeg winter and the fact it landed in a month when folks are typically feeling the post-holiday cash crunch.

And while this fall’s festival, with its overarching them of “Wines of Europe,” was by no means a flop, attendance was definitely lower than in a typical year; a couple of the smaller, ancillary “Wine Down” events were cancelled altogether, while the head count at the public tastings at the RBC Convention Centre was visibly lower than normal.

Yes, the Friday and Saturday public tastings were still decently busy, but noticeably absent were the constant throngs of people jostling and clamouring for samples around any given booth. The energy was still good, but there was way more elbow room for geeks like me to take notes on wines.

Maybe some folks who attended January’s 2023-turned-2024 Winnipeg Wine Festival might have been feeling some festival fatigue, lacking the interest (or the budget) to swirl, sniff and sip at the big show twice in one year. There were other factors that could have played a part — the Jets were playing the Minnesota Wild at Canada Life Centre on Saturday night, for instance, and the Blue Bombers were on the tube playing in Edmonton against the Elks the same night.

The Winnipeg Wine Festival has done more than introduce Winnipeggers to new wines in a fun environment — it’s also one of Special Olympics Manitoba’s primary sources of revenue. Having lost out on the festival’s much-needed funds in 2020 and 2021 was surely a huge blow for the organization, so holding two festivals in the same calendar year was maybe a bit odd, but understandable.

Perhaps this fall’s slightly more subdued events will see organizers consider some tweaks to the festival’s overall format to re-engage and excite Winnipeg wine lovers. Recent changes to the public tastings have seen some ciders, beers, coolers and pre-mixed cocktails added to the fest in order to cater to a wider range of palates. I’m undecided as to whether that was a move in the right direction, or whether it dilutes the notion of a wine festival being about, well, wine.

Some years back, Winnipeg’s private wine stores also participated in the festival, with their corner of the public tasting room bringing a kitchen party vibe — could bringing them back into the fold be a potential step in the right direction?

If given the chance, what sort of changes (if any) would you make to the Winnipeg Wine Festival?

uncorked@mts.net

@bensigurdson