Is the Largest Wine Event in the World Coming to Houston?
Houston is known as a culinary City with its great diversity of foods, cultures, and wine events. We have Wine and Food Week in The Woodlands, Katy Sip and Stroll, the Wine Walk in the Richmond/Rosenberg/Sugarland area and more. One of the BEST kept secrets is the HUGE series of wine vents hosted by Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo over the course of the February-March time frame. Almost 3,000 wines were judged by several panels of wine judges last November 10th thru 12th with top wines selected to be featured at a series of wine events during the World’s largest Rodeo and Livestock Show. For those wineries that submitted entries for the International Wine competition, the winery had to make a commitment of supplying several hundred cases of the wines for these events in the event your wines took top honors. On Sunday evening (February 18th), about 450 winning wines will be paired with foods from about a hundred of the top eateries in the greater Houston area. There should be around 3,800 at the BEST BITES competition in the NRG Hall to start off the days and days of wine enjoyment. About a third of those wines served at the BEST BITES Event should be from Texas. I hope those restaurants take note of these Texas wines and start to showcase them in their local restaurants. My question to each participating restaurant at this event will be “Which Texas wines are served at your restaurant?” They will not get my voting beads for top eats if they don’t showcase Texas wines! The Grand Cru Reception starts at 5:15 with “table guests” entering at 6 pm and general admission at 6:30. All tables have been sold but a few individual tickets are available at $165 per adult on a first come basis.
On February 25th, the Wine Dinner and Auction take place featuring one of the largest wine auctions in the world Around 800 will attend this prestigious wine dinner with the auction raising millions of dollars for scholarships. The reception kicks off the evening at 5 pm with dinner at 6 pm and auction at 7 pm. Grand Champion Wines have been averaging about $200,00 per magnum with Reserve Grand Champion Wines around $180,000.
The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo runs from February 27th thru March 17th with record crowds anticipated to attend the rodeo, the livestock events and the Carruth Wine Garden sponsored by Frost Bank. Tables are available along with tents to host 150 in the Wine Garden. Enjoy the award-winning wines including Texas wines. Several Texas wineries will be pouring their wines during this daily wine garden venue with live music paired for your enjoyment. There will be sixteen wine seminars to showcase wines, wine pairings and Texas’ booming wine industry. Each seminar lasts 90 minutes with wine provided during most of these seminars. About 1,500 should be attending this daily wine function in the Carruth Wine Garden, making a total participation of 30,000.
Total attendance at wine events during the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo should be around 35,000, making the world largest Rodeo also one of the largest wine events in the world! “Bear” Dalton with SPEC’S started this event eleven years ago, creating Houston Rodeo Uncorked! This event has evolved into an international wine competition involving thousands of wines and tens of thousands attending the series of events during the world’s largest Rodeo. Has Houston Rodeo Uncorked evolved into the largest wine event in the world?