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Monday, April 25, 2011
Wine festival returns after 4-year hiatus
MORROW — Valley Vineyards in Warren County is bringing back a retooled wine festival this spring.
The Valley Vineyards Wine Festival: A Taste of Warren County will be held from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturday, June 4. The event will celebrate 41 years of winemaking at Valley Vineyards, and will feature offerings from food producers and restaurants such as Wildflower Cafe of Mason and The Jam and Jelly Lady of Lebanon. The festival also will include the winery’s annual “Walk-Run Through the Vineyards,” which this year will benefit a Hamilton Twp. “Shop With A Cop” program, according to the winery’s web site. Live music, a wine-education tent, cellar tours and hot-air balloon rides also will be offered.
Joe Schuchter, whose family owns and operates Valley Vineyards, said family members decided to revive the wine festival after talking with representatives of the Warren County Convention and Visitors bureau. The wine-and-food event will spotlight what Warren County has to offer and how the winery’s wines are grown and produced, Schuchter said.
Valley Vineyards canceled its annual festival in 2007 after the full-weekend event drew about 80,000 people, many of whom camped overnight on the winery’s grounds. At the time, Schuchter said his family was taking the action in part to “clean it up and rework it.” A decade earlier, in 1998, two women were hospitalized after a festival attendee drove over their tents as they slept.
Schuchter said the redesigned festival will have a “stepped-up, though low-key, security presence,” and the winery’s employees and event volunteers will enforce “a strict policy of not serving to those who are intoxicated, or very close to it.”
This year’s event will be a single-day affair, with no camping or overnight parking. Spring Hill Suites Cincinnati Northeast will be offering a free shuttle to and from the festival.
Valley Vineyards traces its roots to 1969, when founder Ken Schuchter planted 20 acres of grapevines on the site. Today, three generations of the Schuchter family are involved in operating the winery and vineyards. For more information about the festival, check out the Valley Vineyards web site event listings or call the winery at (513) 899-2485.
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