That was our weekend at this year’s annual Epcot Food & Wine Festival in Orlando, Florida. Each autumn Epcot, one of four Walt Disney World Resorts, hosts this food and wine lover’s dream festival expanding their usual 11 country World Showcase into 23 where you can travel from Argentina to Paris to Japan and more in hours.

While you can spend your days strolling and sampling the International Marketplace’s 72 tapas sized food samples and 109 wine, beer and cocktail offerings, as was our focus last year, this year we planned in advance to experience some of the festival’s premium events.

Must GO’s from this year’s festival (more details on these in the coming posts)…

  • French Regional Wine Lunch: This 3 ½ hour dining experience at Bistro de Paris featured the region of Champagne and the exquisite Champagne’s of Nicolas Feuillate.
  • Epcot Wine School: During this 2 hour educational and wine tasting experience, Sharron McCarthy with Banfi Wines took us on a tour of Italian wine.
  • New Wine Discoveries from Italy, Germany, Portugal and China.

The Festival Welcome Center is a great place to begin your exploration. Pick up your passport highlighting all the great samples in each country and make sure you get stamped as you sample. The Center also offers great experiences like home entertaining seminars, food and beverage author discussions, book and bottle signings and the Intermission Café hosted by Kobrand.  It’s also the location of culinary, wine and beverage/mixology seminars.

Epcot admission gives you access to the park, Welcome Center and International Marketplaces. You pay for the tastings, many seminars and all premium events. With the festival now in its 16th year, there are loyal fans of the event and premium events sell out quickly. You can also buy tickets to the Eat to the Beat Concert Series. Check out the gallery for lots of great photos.

The festival is a great opportunity to travel the world’s beverage and culinary offerings in only a few days![/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]