Wine Festival promises a very good year
by Mary Helen Sprecher
newsroom@baltimoreguide.com
Chris Ryer, executive director of Southeast CDC, is hoping that the Highlandtown Wine Festival, like the vino it celebrates, is getting better with age.
This year’s event has been expanded to three days, April 18-20, he notes.
“We’ll have tastings by invitation only on Friday, April 18, and the festival Saturday and Sunday, with lots of food and wine, and music and dacing at Our Lady of Pompei.”
One thing new this year will be movies at the Southeast Anchor Library. Organizers are hoping to find family-friendly fare that has a wine-related theme. (The famous ‘grape stomping’ episode of “I Love Lucy” has been mentioned).
The festival will, of course, have the all-important judging of homemade wines — including Fr. Luigi Esposito’s annual summary: “Good, but not as good as last year.”
The CDC is also promoting Highlandtown as both a destination and a place to live, work and raise kids.
“Realtors are organizing open houses in conjunction with the festival,” he notes.
An open house for real estate professionals is being planned at the Laughing Pint, with Higlandtowners available to answer questions. A grant has been received from PNC Bank to help organize the realtor program.
Something else that has been improved is the seat of the wine festival itself — the garden and courtyard in back of Our Lady of Pompei. The Domenic Petrucci family has donated time, labor and materials to improve the appearance of the area.
Petrucci says that he and another donor, who prefers to remain anonymous, will have the courtyard finished in time for the festival. The project will probably cost upwards of $30,000.
It will be, he says, the perfect setting.
“It’s going to look really beautiful,” he says, sounding satisfied. “Really beautiful. When you see this project, you’re going to say ‘Wow.’”
That’s exactly what Ryer is hoping people will say.
“We’re trying to spread the goodwill of the wine festival to the rest of the neighborhood,” he notes.
March 28th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
The information in this article is wrong.
The Highlandtown Wine Festival is held on one day, Sunday April 20 from 1:00 to 6:00 PM. There is a neighborhood cleanup on Saturday, all our welcome, and the judging takes place on Friday. We learned several years ago that having the judging the night before the festival was not a good idea. Too hard to get up the next day.
It was Father Petti that said “Good, but not as good as last year.”
The festival is organized by the Highlandtown Community Association and Di Pasquale’s Italian Marketplace. This year SECDC is organizing some Main Streets events in conjunction with the successful event including the open houses. And of course the Southeast Anchor Library is running a oenophilic film fest in conjunction with the festival.