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| My tasting glass from 1987 |
1970s The Start
The Harvest Fair is born and it's very small time. That is, there were a handful of winners in the early years. Of course, there weren't many premium wineries in Sonoma County either. The fair was set up as a true harvest fair where wine was only one of the products. There were kids' activities, there were farmers showing off their antique two-cycle engines, there were lots and lots of apples.
The wine tasting was different from most in that you bought tickets and traded them for a taste. So you could try five wines then go do something else if that's what you wanted.
1980s and 90s The Boom Years
As the number of wineries in the county grew so did the fair's wine tasting. The Award Night, where the winners were announced, became the local version of the Oscars where you bought the expensive ticket and dressed up. It was a big deal. By the late 80s the Saturday afternoon crowds were wall-to-wall during the public tasting weekend that went for three days--Friday, Saturday, and Sunday--four to five hours each day.
The first Harvest Fair I attended was 1981, when Matanzas Creek won the Sweepstakes (voted best wine overall) for their Chardonnay. I congratulated the then-owner of the winery who was pouring.
The Harvest Fair was all the rage if you were a wine drinker, even a casual one, because you could hang out with friends and socialize. There were some people I didn't see all year except at the Harvest Fair. Many of us took off early from work on Friday to attend that day. The so-called World Championship Grape Stomp was a big deal, too. Busloads of kids would spend Friday at the fair doing all the other harvest- and farm-related things.
During the late 80s thru the 90s my wife and I attended several Awards Nights the week before the official Harvest Fair. We also attended a day or two of tasting and/or we poured wine for wineries we were associated with at the time.
2000-2018 A Slow to Quick Decline
The Harvest Fair is often voted the county's most popular event by locals. But things slowed a bit, or at least leveled off. Beer was introduced into the fair, also. The "side events" that represented the rest of the Sonoma County harvest was getting pushed back by the popularity of the wine event. Prices crept up.
The guy in charge of the wine judging for the fair is successful at it because his thing is to give away as many gold medals as possible cuz it's good for the wineries. This event is about winery PR after all. When I checked last year there were nearly a thousand medals given out (gold, silver, bronze) and there appeared to be maybe a couple dozen wines entered that did not receive some sort of medal. In the "old days" a silver or bronze used to mean something. Now many wineries grumble at getting only a bronze. This was, and still is, a mistake.
The popular Awards Night became an industry event only so no general population folks (you know, the people who buy wine) could attend. That was a glaring mistake.
The wine tasting went from a ticket-per-taste event to a very expensive one-price event. The wine tasting was cut from a four hour event to three. Another mistake as the "casual taster" who wanted to try just a few wines was left out.
The rest of the harvest events involving kids, farmers, non-wine crops are gone. The Harvest Fair is now a wine tasting only. Kids are not allowed (nothing for them to do anyway). Big mistake.
2019 The End
It was announced that the Harvest Fair would be merged with the summer county fair -- the one with the rides, horse races, farm animals, etc. So the 2019 wine tasting coming up this week is the last Harvest Fair. The Final Mistake.
2020 Future Failure
The wine judging will be at a time when wineries have not yet bottle many of their new releases. The Grape Stomp will happen when there are no ripe grapes. People will have a difficult time finding parking as it's already filled up from fair-goers. You'll have to pay to attend the county fair even if you only want to do the wine tasting.
The wine tasting event will fail. Why? I don't know if the fair board is that clueless or if they're being controlled by some other power. Either way I can't figure how people with that lack of vision could ever hold down real jobs. Yeah, maybe that's a bit brutal, but the slow decline of the Harvest Fair over the past ten years is someone's fault, huh?
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| Harvest Fair wine tasting a couple years ago |
It appears the Harvest Fair is haven't a difficult time finding a home at the county's summer fair. That is, they can't find a place to host the event on the fairgrounds during that time. Yeah, you'd think they would have got that approved before making the decision. Anyway, it appears the fair board is rethinking their decision. Of course, this change is based on internal issues, not what the local people want which is a return to the Harvest Fair of old.
2/10/20 A social media ad for the county fairgrounds listed upcoming 202 events shows the Harvest Fair for Oct 9=10.
Sad to see it go.
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