The Blue Ridge Wine Festival is taking reservations for its popular Winemaker’s Dinners, which are held in conjunction with the three-day Blowing Rock event, scheduled for April 12 to 14. The festival, which celebrates regional wineries including Asheville’s Biltmore Estate Wine Company, features wine tastings, seminars and a cooking contest. For more information, visit www.blueridgewinefestival.com.
There are still almost 100 dinners to be eaten between now and the end of May, which means buying into the Asheville Independent Restaurant Association‘s Main Course dining program still makes sense. There are just a few remaining packages, each containing 29 “buy one entrée/get one free” cards for use at participating restaurants. That’s $500 worth of food for $75. To order a box, call 628-3070.
Buy your yeast now. Asheville, already home to some spectacular artisan bakers, will host a few of the nation’s top bread heads for the third annual Artisan Bread Bakers’ Festival on Saturday, March 24. The day of programming includes an artisan-bread sale at Greenlife Grocery and classes for home cooks and professionals. Special guests and instructors include King Arthur Flour (that’s the good stuff) director of training and Jeffrey Hammelman, author of Bread, pizza expert Peter Reinhart and Johnson & Wales instructor Jeffrey Alexander. To learn more, call 683-2902 or e-mail wakerobinfarmbreads@main.nc.us.
— Hanna Rachel Raskin
