October 30th, 2016
After a rough 4 nights studying back to back for midterms, I had a pretty exciting weekend to relieve the stresses. Starting of with the Hong Kong Wine and Dine Festival! This is held every fall lasting 4 nights at the Central Harbourfront. There are hundreds of stalls set up festival-style with the lovely backdrop of Victoria Harbor. At these stalls, as you might’ve expected, you can go through a wide range of different fine wine and spirits from all over the globe as well as award-winning bites.
Upon entry you can either simply pay for admission, or you can additionally purchase a wine pass at 100HKD 200HKD or 600HKD. These wine passes determine your class of wine tasting and the amount of tokens you get for tasting. Buying the Classic Wine Pass Lite (100 HKD) gives you 5 wine tokens that you can use to taste wines priced up to 600 HKD depending on how many tokens you use, while the regular Classic Wine(200 HKD) pass gives you 10 tokens. The most expensive Grand Wine Pass(600 HKD) allows you to taste wines that are worth up to 2,700 HKD, depending how you use your tokens. Fancy fancy.
One section of the festival is organized by country, where you can get selections of Italian wine, Spanish Wine, French wine, etc. Another section is dedicated to whisky and craft beers, and my favorite section was for the foodies. There you can purchase a bunch of award-winning bite sized snacks from all over. I gathered some bites to be just as filling as a meal. I tried out a cheese tart with lobster, brown sugar chicken wings, and a waffle with ice cream. Also, if you purchased the Grand Wine Pass you gain access to the fancy fancy Grand Pavilion. You get to sit down and get served specially made meals prepared by famous chefs and award-wining restaurants.
I underestimated the size of this festival. It was about half the size of Made in America Festival in Philly, which is still quite big, and was overwhelming with people. If you didn’t have a map, you’d probably get lost haha. People are walking around sipping and eating, dropping wine glasses, hanging out by the stage for the musical performances, and lining up for the ferris wheel. It was definitely a fun experience.
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