Home > Forklore > Archives > 2011 > May > 17 > Entry
Food & Wine magazine teaming with ACL promoter for Austin Food & Wine Festival
Food & Wine magazine and the company behind the Austin City Limits Festival will produce the first Austin Food & Wine Festival in March 2012, organizers announced Tuesday.
The event marks a change for the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival, which will end its 26-year run and become part of the new festival, scheduled for March 30-April 1.
“Knowing the kind of powerhouse that Food & Wine magazine can bring to Austin, that was one of the huge incentives for us to do this,” said Hill Country festival president Cathy Cochran-Lewis.
As part of the arrangement with C3 Presents, the Hill Country group will become the Austin Food & Wine Foundation and become the new festival’s beneficiary , receiving a percentage of proceeds for nonprofit projects, Cochran-Lewis said.
Along with C3, the magazine and the foundation, the Austin festival will be a collaboration with Austin chef Tyson Cole, Fort Worth chef Tim Love and Austin restaurateur Jesse Herman, said C3 partner Charlie Jones. The Austin company produces ACL as well as the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago.
“The culinary culture in Austin has expanded a lot in the last couple of years,” Jones said. “So it felt like to us and to Tyson and Tim and Jesse that it was time to help the festival put together a culinary event that would showcase the cuisine of Austin and the state of Texas.”
To help shape the new festival, Jones said C3 will look at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, Colo., and the the South Beach Wine & Food Festival in Florida as well as past Hill Country festivals. C3 helped produce the Hill Country festival in 2005.
Cole, the chef-owner of Uchi and Uchiko restaurants who will help lead the new festival, said, “I’d really like to bring some of the top-tier talent from the whole country into Austin, not too dissimilar from an ACL-type event with music,” he said.
“Food & Wine magazine has the experience in putting those kind of events on. Having that component and combining it with C3’s experience with all the festivals that they put on, it seemed like a perfect marriage,” said Cole, who was one of the magazine’s Best New Chefs in 2005.
The Hill Country festival was started by Fall Creek Vineyards owners Ed and Susan Auler and Austinite Larry Peel in 1986. The change comes after a well-attended 2011 festival that made $62,000, the first time in several years the event has made money, Cochran-Lewis said.
“This is good for the city, and it will definitely be good for the food and wine businesses and artisan producers,” she said.
(Top: The Sunday Fair at the 2011 Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Fstival, which is becoming the Austin Food & Wine Festival. American-Statesman photo by Brenda O’Brian.)
Comments
When commenting, we ask that you keep things civil and abide by our Visitor Agreement. To report comment abuse, click here.
By ask
May 17, 2011 6:28 PM | Link to this
Yea, another drunken festival to keep austinites and visitors from looking at problems from a sober perspective.