Fork and Cork

1st and Main
Blacksburg, VA 24060

Fork and Cork website

April 28th 12pm - 6pm

Tasting? $20 in advance, $25 at the door

Just hanging out? $5 at the door only

This year I finally made it to Fork and Cork. I'm graduating so I thought it would be a great experience for an up and coming wine lover! As it turns out, it was a really fun. But I definitely have some tips to make it better.

1. Volunteer - If you are a college kid like me, you don't have $20 laying around to blow. So volunteer! You work about a 3 hour shift at the beginning or end of the event. You also get free entry, a sweet t-shirt and glass to taste with after your shift. My boyfriend and I volunteered at the same time. He was at ticketing and I was helping out at the Chef Showcase. There are plenty of things to sign up for, but plan ahead so you can get the shift you want. I liked working the earlier shift because I didn't want to think about sobering up before my shift starts.
2. "Early bird gets the wine" - If you get there early, the lines are much shorter for the tastings. By 3pm you were waiting in lines for minimum 20 minutes.
3. Sunscreen - Use it. I learned the hard way. Blacksburg weather changes all the time. That morning it was cloudy, rainy, and cold. By 1pm, it was hot and sunny.
4. Buy a bottle or two or three! - Go with friends and take turns buying bottles. The lines are much faster to just buy a bottle and then you can go relax somewhere.
5. Learn something - There are chefs doing demonstrations all day with wine, food, and all sorts of stuff. Also, before you get too silly, take advantage of talking with the people next to you in line about the wines they have tasted at the festival. This will save you lots of time (if they know what they're talking about.)

That's probably all I have for now. As you scroll down, you'll see what the rest of the day was like (starting with my volunteer shift.)

I'm having difficulty uploading the pictures at the moment.. patience is appreciated.

I signed up to volunteer for one of the Chef Showcase stations. This was pretty fun, the people were nice and I got to learn interesting things about cooking.

The Chef I helped was demonstrating how to use chemicals for cooking. It's not exactly like it sounds. Above are is a container of the ingredients he used for making the red wine sauce. From what I gathered, they help maintain consistency of the different sauces and foams that he made. Also, he made mayonnaise, balsamic vinaigrette, and a strawberry foam that was delicious.

The infamous John Boyer also came out to share his wine knowledge.

Hokie-Tron-Robot-Man-Thing

Yes, that is a giant cupcake.(part of the Chef Showcase)

This was the one place Camp and I waited for 20 minutes to get a tasting. Then we wised up and bought some bottles!

Pretty good crowd! Amazing weather.

Check out this sweet corker thing.

Super cool chick and her soon-to-be husband. I like this wine. It was a slightly oaked Chardonnay from Fincastle Winery. It was slightly dry, rich color, and not but $10! Good buy Britt.

We went back later to Fincastle Winery and picked up this Hybrid Vigor. This and the Chardonnay were probably the best wines I tasted at Fork and Cork. This one was around $12 too.

Camp has a bottle of Eclipse from Horton Vineyards. It was a white wine, $12 bucks. The people around me loved it! I thought it was okay. It was simple, good chilled, and really nice for the temperature outside. But it wasn't very complex at all. A step above Chateau Morrisette Sweet Mountain Laurel.

Horton Vineyard Sweet Concord from Virginia. Now this was wayyyy too sweet. It was not bad, but I guess I'm becoming a "wine snob" because it just tasted like sugar water to me. Definitely don't need to try again. It was also around $12.

Irish tap dancers?

The rest are other wines that we didn't get to try and I'm not that sad because I probably didn't need to at that point.