food and wine festival 20-22 MarchWel­ling­ton is a city over­flow­ing with good res­taur­ants and fine drops to drink. It seems ridicu­lous that we haven’t had our own day-of-food-and-wine-and-oh-okay-fine-beer yet. Luck­ily, that’s about to change with the cun­ningly named Wel­ling­ton Food and Wine Fest­iv­al.

The Fest­iv­al brings togeth­er the best of loc­al food, wine, bever­ages and res­taur­ants, out­doors on the water­front in the sun, accom­pan­ied by great music, fun and friends.

We’re excited by the list of vendors includ­ing our beloved La Boca Loca and sub­ject of a recent post The Chip­pery. Amongst the oth­ers are vari­ous rep­res­ent­at­ives of the Trin­ity Group (El Horno, St John’s, the Old Bailey) and the Nour­ish Group (Shed 5, Pravda and the Crab Shack). I guess it may be easi­er for large busi­nesses to take a gamble on some­thing new, and for that, we must salute them. There’s also a couple of con­test­ants from My Kit­chen Rules front­ing up, includ­ing Heath­er and Aaron (yay!) and Dai and Dal (boo (I’m sure they’re lovely, but they wer­en’t who I was cheer­ing for when I watched)).

Beer drink­ers are catered for with Black Dog and Tuatara, while hap­pily the wine selec­tion included pretty much my favour­ite Mar­tin­bor­ough vine­yard Mar­grain (no word yet on wheth­er or not they’ll have their fam­ous tast­ing notes which once described a rose as being as soft as cud­dling a panda’s belly).

There are four seper­ate ses­sions stretch­ing from the Fri­day even­ing to the Sunday after­noon, so pick one that best matches your sched­ule. Early­bird tick­ets are on sale until March 15 for $29.95, so get in quick.

Or even bet­ter, WIN a pair of VIP tick­ets from us. Just leave us a com­ment below telling us what kind of fest­iv­al you’d like Wel­ling­ton to have next. We’ll draw one per­son at ran­dom and noti­fy you at lunch­time on the 15th so if you don’t win, you’ll still have time to get your tick­ets at early­bird price.  Hur­rah!