The Santa Fe Wine & Chile Fiesta: An Appreciation

We participate in a lot of events each year. These range from wine dinners to seminar panels to stand-up tastings. Some are here in our back yard, others around California, and yet more scattered around the country. Looking at our Upcoming Events page shows 20 events that we'll be participating in before the end of the year, and a quick scroll through our archives shows that we've already completed 83 events this year. While we've always done a lot of events, I'm not sure we've ever hit 100 before. It's a sign of the times; one of the ways that we can have a hand in ensuring our own success is to work hard to be visible out there in the market, and to support the restaurants and wine shops that stock our wines.

For all that event participation, there's only one event outside of California that we participate in every year: the Santa Fe Wine & Chile Fiesta. I just got back from participating myself this year, and was thinking a little about why. These are the things that make it special:

• A great audience. There are lots of busy wine events (though to be fair, plenty that feel a little underpopulated, too). But at Santa Fe Wine & Chile, the attendance always feels appropriate to the scale of the event. You don't end up feeling orphaned at your table. You don't participate in a seminar with more empty seats than full ones. And the attendees are enthusiastic, interested, and having fun.
• The organizers make sure you get a lot out of it. This year, in the five days of the event, we got to be a part of eight events: three tastings (the trade, reserve, and grand tastings); two seminars (one on unexpected California and another on the Wine Atlas Collective); two dinners (at the Santa Fe institution Coyote Cafe and at Los Alamos's newest hot spot Beef & Leaf); and at the Rosé All Day brunch that concluded things on Sunday. That's a lot of opportunities to make new fans for the winery. We came back with several pages of new mailing list members, a couple of wine club signups, and a whole bunch of new friendships with people in the local restaurant scene. This photo was taken at our Beef & Leaf dinner, of me with Chef/Owner Laura Crucet talking to the audience:

• Participation of local restaurants. Speaking of those restaurants, there aren't many towns of Santa Fe's size with a better restaurant scene. I ate more green chile-inflected dishes than I have since, well, the last time I was in Santa Fe. But just because there are a bunch of good restaurants nearby doesn't guarantee that they'll support a wine festival. It's expensive for restaurants to set up mobile kitchens and give away their food, and most festivals I know struggle to get the best of their local restaurants involved. Not in Santa Fe. The Grand Tasting had nearly as many restaurant tables (60) as winery tables (80). All of them were serving substantial bites, and even the most popular restaurants were able to keep up with the demand so that you didn't get long lines and waits. I'm not sure how the festival organizers make the economics work, but it's noteworthy.
• Value. Events are expensive to put on. You have to rent venues. You have to pay for catering, rentals, and transportation. And they require people to organize them, who also need to be paid. But unlike many events that cost wineries $10,000 or more to participate, Santa Fe Wine & Chile doesn't make you feel like they're making the event work on the backs of the wineries who are there giving away samples and absorbing the costs of their time and travel. As a participating winery, we are asked to make a donation of an appealing auction lot. That's it. Now when you add up all the other costs of participating, it's still not insignificant. But it feels proportional, not exploitative. At this moment, when we're reconsidering many of our marketing expenses and have dropped several events that have become painfully expensive, this is one we keep.
• The personal touch. Like most special events, it comes down to the people putting them on. And in the case of Santa Fe, from Executive Director Mary Hallahan to Guest Experience & Vendor Relations Manager Makayla Moore to Founder Greg O'Byrne, you feel their personal care and involvement. Due to rain, they had to move the venue for the Grand Tasting a week before the event took place. It came off without a hitch (an amazing achievement in itself) but in addition to the emails I got I probably had four different members of the team check in with me to make sure that I'd heard the news and was getting the support I needed. That's indicative of the care that they put into making sure everything came out right. And they were at all the events, circulating, listening, asking questions, and making sure that people were being connected.

Is there a lesson here for other events? Absolutely, although with the increasing corporatization of everything in America I know a lot of things have to come (and stay) together for it to happen. What I love about the Santa Fe Wine & Chile Fiesta is that it feels personal, and local, and human-scaled. It hasn't been taken over by a corporation. It still has the same guy in charge. When my wife Meghan and I first moved out to California in 2002, my dad chose the Santa Fe Wine & Chile Fiesta that September to introduce us to what a great wine festival was like. We joined my mom and dad for the tastings, watched my dad on a seminar panel, and had the fun and surreal experience of being the featured winery at a restaurant and, as the night went on, seeing every table have a bottle of Tablas Creek on it. I met Greg O'Byrne, who my dad had known from Greg's restaurant days (and my dad's importer days) in the 1980s. Here we are, 25 years later, at this year's event.

Fast forward a quarter century, and the event is even better. What a treat. See you in 2027, Santa Fe Wine & Chile Fiesta.