I visited this festival in 2008 as well. Compared to 2008 it there where more cheese oriented booths this year. It felt like there where allot more food in general. I was also under the impression that there was a higher number of expensive wines in 2008. But we might just not have been offered them. Who would serve nice wine to a bunch of trashy beer geeks anyway?
This years festival was more cramped than last time and eventually me and Per got tired of both the crowd and the wine and decided to go for a beer. So we walked across the bridge to Bishops Arms. It didn’t take us long to have 5-6 bottles of beer lined up in front of us. We focused mainly on hopped up IPAs and DIPAs, but a couple of other beers managed to mix in with the crowd.
BrewDog Hardcore IPA was the one that stood out the most. Would love to try it again when I don’t have countless of wine samples in my belly. We also had Avery IPA and BrewDog 5am Saint. Tractor-Kalle decided to try a bottle of De Molen Hel & Verdoemenis and I wasn’t late to sneak a small sample out of the bottle. I finished the set with a bottle of Mikkeller Black. Which definitely was the biggest mistake of the evening. Even though it was expensive I probably should have left the 17,5% beer in it’s glass as I had to rush off to the bus.

I’m finally starting to feel human again. It was a fun but rough weekend with lots of nice beer and wine. Despite the name the first thing I encountered at the wine and cheese festival was actually a beer. It was a hotel in Dalarna that had brewed their own beer through Grebbestads. A decent lager with some fruity notes, actually got some cloud berry feeling from it. Might just be my expectations playing tricks on me.

I then went for a walk and checked the festival out. The scenery is perfect and brings a fantastic atmosphere, but it almost gets hidden behind all the commercial from the booths. I walked around a bit with my beer and took in the sights. Rumor has it the festival will move to Conventum in the future, I really hope they keep it at the castle as it is a defining part of the festival. It’s cramped and probably not very economical, but it makes the festival stand out amongst the rest.

After finishing off my beer I went to a random booth and got offered a small sample of sparkled wine. I asked if they had anything fun and special and ended up with almost a full glass of some limited edition wine. To be honest I prefer small samples at these things and the wine didn’t feel that “limited” in my newbie wine mouth.

It didn’t take long before I ran into my parents and their friends. They where doing an Italian red wine tasting and I tagged along. We also did a tasting at Torres before Per showed up an hour after we entered the festival. Me and Per then teamed up to try some more wine. We tried to combine some wine and cheese and did small tastings at every booth we visited. Mostly strong and rough red wines, but we also tried white, rosé, sparkled, beer and cider. The supply of the last two where far from great but it was nice to mix it up a bit. Specially having a dry cider after all that red wine was great.

I will continue part 2 with some expressions from the festival and what happened afterwards.

I plan to visit the Chateu Grand Cru this weekend. It’s a wine and cheese festival in Örebro, located inside the castle. I’ve been there before and it’s usually pretty good. Very nice setting inside the castle and the people in the booths are always knowledgable and friendly.

The only thing I can complain about is that it get quite cramped and the ticket system seems a bit overcomplicated. This year you buy tickets that give you right to enter at different times during the day. I personally have the earliest tickets so I won’t be affected but it feels like a drop in value for those that show up late, but my beer-loving sidekick Per had some problems getting tickets and will have to show up at a later time. However I guess it will be a fix to the overcrowd problem.

I should have a report up some time after the weekend.