Andra & Steve's Journey: Denver Food and Wine Festival (September 10th, 2016)

It feels like we have been pretty busy lately, and thought we would just enjoy a nice quiet weekend at home, but last night I got a text from my wonderful friend Claudette. Her husband works for an upper-end liquor distributor. He was working at the Denver Food & Wine Festival on Saturday and had some tickets available.

We are never one's to pass up this kind of an opportunity, so of course, we said yes!!!

The festival is an over 21 event, held from 1:00 to 4:00 on Saturday afternoon, with early entry for VIP ticket holders. Claudette warned us that once the gates open for general admission at 1:00 that is gets crowded fast, so Steve and I decided to be there at 12:00, when the doors opened for the VIP ticket holders.

The event was held on the grounds of the Pepsi Center in downtown Denver.

As we entered the main gate at 12:00, they handed us each a huge wine glass (they held an entire bottle of wine), and a plate, and told us that the VIP tent was off to our left, so we headed over there first. Claudette said that the best food and wine is usually in the VIP tent.

Each restaurant that is represented in the VIP tent offers one or two items from their menu, with a wine pairing. There is also a wine table as you enter the tent that provides tastings of a large variety of wines.

We stopped at the wine table first, and one of the servers was talking about a particular Merlot, that he said presents itself more like a Cabernet, very dark and robust. Well that sounded like it would be right up our alley, so we both tried it, and it definitely didn't disappoint!

The funny thing is that since our glasses were so huge, a taste of each wine is more like about half a glass, so a little caution throughout the day would be necessary.

After enjoying that wonderful Napa Valley wine, we made our way into the tent, where there were about ten different restaurants represented. We tried small bites from all of them, with a variety of different dishes and wines.

Our favorite was the buckwheat polenta and wild boar stew from Del Lagos restaurant in downtown Denver. I was to die for!!! And of course, we loved it so much that we forgot to get a picture of it until after we devoured most of it. Oh well.

They also had some tasty desserts to try, but we were already starting to get full from all of the wonderful food. These were peanut butter - chocolate and snicker doodle cupcakes.

They had seating areas set up everywhere, ranging from comfy couches to tables with umbrellas. They had plenty of shade, and the service was impeccable, as they came around and cleared our dishes so we could make our way back to the tables for more tastings.

When we finally left the VIP tent, and headed out into the rest of the festival, we came across the Colorado Fire Fighter's, who were selling their 2016 calendar.

Steve said he would have been much to jealous if I had purchased a calendar, so I had to settle for a picture with the fire-fighter themselves.......NOT! And of course, Steve left them a very nice donation for the opportunity! That was money well spent, don't you agree?

OK, the calendar wouldn't have been too bad either!

The quick stop with the firefighters gave us a chance to digest a little bit before we continued on to the other thousand restaurants that had booths at the festival. OK, that might have been a slight exaggeration, but I really don't think so!

Since Colorado now seems to be known only for it's marijuana, and the marijuana stores are all called dispensaries, the name of this doughnut shop cracked us up.

And we have to admit that their doughnuts were quite addicting! The chef poured Grand Marnier in the pan, and then caramelized hot, fresh doughnuts in it. Oh my! I could have eaten 20 of them if wasn't already so full!

After our doughnuts, we continued on through all of the vendors. Patron Tequila had a very nice stand where they were serving three different types of margaritas, one with mango, one called a Mexican mule, and one with their coffee tequila. All three were very good.....yes we tried them all!

The event was huge as you can see!

After awhile we were hot and tired, and looking for a place to sit down and cool off. We noticed that Weber grills had a nice indoor space, so we went in and made ourselves comfortable. This indoor space was incredible! It was a fold-out semi trailer, hooked to a semi truck. It would fold down to the size of a semi, or when they were at an event, it folded out to a 24' x 48' room with big beautiful windows. I think I want to live there!