I spent the month of November at two wine festivals I had been anxiously waiting for all year. While the focus of the two festivals are completely different, they both highlight delicious wines that are some of my favorites.
Volver Volver
During a food tour in Mexico City in February 2024, our tour guide and I bonded about our shared interest in wine. He told me about a natural wine festival that occurs in CDMX each year, Volver Volver. The festival highlights wineries and wine makers that focus on producing organic and biodynamic wines. The wines generally have minimal additives, fermentation must occur spontaneously, and the vines are minimally treated (if at all). This year’s festival featured many Mexican producers as well as wine from Georgia (the country!), Chile, the USA, as well as some European countries.
I didn’t know much about Mexican wine before 2023 but was introduced at my favorite, now closed (rip) restaurant in the Juarez neighborhood of CDMX called Amaya. I was amazed by the amount of natural wine coming out of Valle de Guadalupe and Queretaro. After a trip to Valle de Guadalupe earlier this year, I knew I had to make it down to Mexico for this festival. I was impressed (tbh obsessed) with so many of the wines I tasted but some favorite producers were: Vinos Pijoan, Vino Figura, Octagono, Vinos Barrigones, and Lomas de Llahuen.
So, why should you go? If you are a fan of natural wine, especially of Mexican wines that are so delicious but nearly impossible to get in the USA and/or Canada, this is the perfect opportunity to go taste wines and pick the producers’ brains for a day or two. The festival is normally in November though the weekend has varied each year. The exact dates of the festival are normally released in August. I will definitely be back next year, and will attend BOTH days to fully take advantage of all of the wines.
Two Up Wine Down
As you already know from this page, I love Virginia wine. VA is where I first learned about (good) wine as a young 23-year-old in graduate school and it keeps pulling me back. Two Up Wine Down is a wine festival that pours mostly Virginia wines while focusing on a fun environment that highlights the local community, making it an accessible event to everyone. The most exciting part about the festival is the amount of representation that is seen: there are winemakers of all backgrounds and locations throughout VA featured at this festival. Even more exciting is that many of the wines that you will taste are out of the two local wine incubators, the Virginia Wine Collective and Commonwealth Crush. While Virginia wine has gotten a lot of national recognition over the past few years, I think that it really shines with many of the small producers who are rewriting the narrative on the use of hybrid grapes in wine as well as breaking away from traditional production methods.
So, why should you go? If you are someone who likes to drink wine outside, support the diversification of wine, and dance to some bops in between glasses of wine – this is the festival for you. It is very rare to see such diversity represented in the wine space, so if you are a person of color or a young person who has been looking for a wine festival to attend, take the trip down to Charlottesville next fall!
Look out for a future post highlighting my favorite wines from these two events.
Happy wine drinking and let me know if you attend either of these festivals!
Leave a Reply