Dennis Lane
“I’m soooooo wasted.”
I suppose that could be helpful information to a waiter, particularly if they’re about to ask a patron if they would like anything to drink. Without even asking, they could then assume that the answer would be “no.”
Apparently, this is exactly how some guests greeted their waiters at Clyde’s last month during the Wine in the Woods weekend in Columbia. It seems that some patrons of the festival washed up on the shores of Lake Kittamaqundi in Town Center after spending an afternoon in Symphony Woods “sampling” the fruits of Maryland viticulture.
It seems that some of the attendees at the 19th annual wine festival did a little more than sampling. As one disgruntled observer noted on the Explore Howard web site, “I thought I had been transported right into Preakness infield. It was a very low class affair that was filled with people who seemed there to get wasted or just sit because it was a cheap way to spend the day.”
The price of admission allowed ticket holders unlimited “sampling,” which some hard partiers simply interpreted as all the wine you can drink for 30 bucks.
It wasn’t always this way. In the earlier years, guests were given a limited number of sampling tickets. Theoretically, once those tickets ran out, you either had to stop drinking wine or actually buy a bottle. I say theoretically because, as the old saying goes, it’s impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. Some people still managed to game the tasting tickets to get wasted.
Still, it did seem that the sampling tickets kept the number of overimbibers to a somewhat manageable level.
Then again, maybe it’s just that Wine in the Woods has gotten so big. This year it is estimated that more than 40,000 people attended the two-day event; that’s easily double the attendance of 10 years ago. It logically follows that, if the total attendance has doubled, so has the number of wasted Wine in the Wooders.
It would be one thing if they just stayed in Symphony Woods and slept it off on the ride home with a designated driver, and in some cases that’s what did occur. Others, however, felt the need to keep the party going and stumbled out of the woods and into the bars in Town Center.
Paul Kraft, the manager of Clyde’s, told me that more than a few of the wasted Wine in the Wooders deposited the contents of their stomachs into his restrooms, creating extra clean up duty for his staff. It’s one thing to have to clean-up from patrons that overindulge in your own establishment, but when someone spent their money getting wasted elsewhere and then throws up in your joint, its quite another.
As it happens, Clyde’s also had its first ever beer tasting event the same Saturday as the wine festival. Paul said about 500 people came and sampled 30-some beers from 11 different craft brewers. He used tickets for the beer sampling.
Defying conventional wisdom, he told me the beer tasters were much better behaved than the wasted wino crowd.
How could he tell?
The purple wristbands distinguished the Wine in the Wooders from the beer tasters.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of Wine in the Woods, and not just for tasting the wine. The combination of the wooded setting with entertainment, crafts and local wines in Columbia’s central park is by far one of the most successful festivals in Howard County.
The festival plays an important role in the promotion of the state’s burgeoning wine industry, too. The fact that it has grown from seven participating wineries in 1992 to the 29 wineries this year is testament to its popularity both with the public and the vintners.
The question today is how can the festival manage that success and still keep peace with its neighbors and responsible drinkers. If Wine in the Woods begins to be perceived as an all-you-can-drink bacchanal, the moderate drinkers and craft patrons won’t come back.
Once that occurs, the better wineries will begin to pull back and the festival could eventually become a victim of its own success.
Dennis Lane co-hosts “and then there’s that …,” a biweekly local news podcast on hocomojo.com and blogs about stuff around here at wordbones.com.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
I vehemently disagree with your slanderous article.
Apparently you don’t know anything about craft beer and as a craft beer drinker I take exception to “Defying conventional wisdom, he told me the beer tasters were much better behaved than the wasted wino crowd.”