Boland region gears up for wine festival

Last year's show; the new format paid off.

This year's festival promises an even bigger line-up than before with over 100 wineries on show, more than 500 wines to taste, mouth-watering delicacies and amazing entertainment.

The festival offers great opportunities to visitors, wine producers, sponsors and exhibitors. Now in a new format the festival has shown strong growth over the years. For the first time ever, the festival will be hosting a special ‘Wine Connoisseurs Evening' on the Thursday (31 July), which replaces the VIP tasting of previous years. This exclusive evening is for the serious wine lover and will offer guests the opportunity to mingle with the top Stellenbosch winemakers and indulge in supreme quality wines.

Since being transformed in 2003 from the previous ‘Stellenbosch Food & Wine Festival', the festival has established itself as a leading event on the international wine calendar.

In 2007, it showed excellent growth in both exhibitors and visitors and hosted more than 11 000 visitors and 140 exhibitors over the four days and more than R300 000 worth of wines were sold. It is estimated that 78% of the people were from the Western Cape, 12% from Gauteng and 10% from overseas.

The festival is aimed at the public, with a more specific preference for the food and wine lover and offers great promotional opportunities for exhibitors to promote their brands.

Exhibition space is limited and is allocated to Stellenbosch American Express Wine Routes members, restaurants, food producers, related products and services. Exhibitors can direct any queries to the festival co-ordinators at Cadek Media - contact Chris de Klerk or Elmarie Rabe at Tel: 0861 222 335. Tickets for the Stellenbosch Wine Festival are available at Computicket, ranging from R100 to R350 per person, and full details of the ticket cost, times and other aspects of the festival are available on 021 886 4310 or the website http://www.wineroute.co.za.