Disney World at 50: Before Epcot stepped in, locals poured into other wine festival

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Before there was the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival — heck, before there was Epcot — there was the Walt Disney World Village Wine Festival.

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By DEWAYNE BEVIL

ORLANDO SENTINEL |

JUL 21, 2021 AT 8:39 AM

 

 

2021 Epcot International Food & Wine Festival

From The Noodle Exchange kiosk kitchen, a Traditional Spicy Vietnamese Beef Pho with Shaved Beef, Enoki Mushrooms, and Thai Basil, one of the featured dishes at the 2021 Epcot International Food & Wine Festival at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., photographed Friday, July 16, 2021. The festival runs through November 20. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel) (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

 

Before there was the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival — heck, before there was even Epcot — there was the Walt Disney World Village Wine Festival.

For this week’s Disney World at 50 feature, which publishes Wednesdays on OrlandoSentinel.com, we look at the roots of wine celebrations at the resort.

The wine festival started as a modest, two-day event in a ballroom at the Lake Buena Vista Conference Center in January 1982, about eight months before Epcot’s grand opening. Sentinel reporter Davin Light noted that some folks wore jeans and others work minks, and that cowboys mingled with corporate presidents at the first one.

“There were tables all around the room, and every table was a different winery,” remembers Heather McPherson, former food editor at the Sentinel. “There was a winemaker, an actual winemaker there or somebody with the family.”

Disney was tapping into the growing interest in wine.

“No one had done it on that scale. … It’s nothing like it is today. But for Disney doing it on that scale was remarkable,” McPherson says. “Locals came. And then people started coming in from farther away.”

Its emphasis, as its name indicates, was on wine. The first event touted 80 California wines from 40 wineries. There was a flat entrance fee that granted unlimited tastings.

“My, how far the food has come,” says McPherson, now media and manager for Millennium Management Group, which owns several restaurants at Disney Springs in Lake Buena Vista and Downtown Disney District in California. She remembers tables with “mounds of cubed cheese and bread.”

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She also recalls paying $18 for admission.

“Wild and crazy kids that we were, we would spend $36 and do a white wine day and a red wine day,” she says.

The event expanded with more days, extra-ticket seminars and celebrities. A noted wine in 1987 was Smothers Brothers’ Mom’s Favorite White. (Dick Smothers went scuba diving in Epcot’s Living Seas exhibit, the Sentinel reported.) Chef Paul Prudhomme made an appearance in 1994.

In the early ’90s, the event started moving, eventually stopping at Fort Wilderness, the Contemporary and Yacht and Beach Club. Somewhere in there, the “Village” was dropped from the name, producing the Walt Disney World Wine Festival. The cover charge topped the $40 mark.

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And then it was gone. In April 1996, a reader wrote the Sentinel and asked “Whatever happened to the Walt Disney World Wine and Food Festival?”

Enter the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival that fall, signaling the end of the original wine event.

“For $1 to $2, guests can sample everything from escargot or baked Brie in France to vegetable sushi and cold soba noodles in Japan or couscous with chicken kebab in Morocco,” Sentinel reporter Linda Shrieves wrote in advance of the new event.

Another change: Epcot admission was required to attend the festival. A one-day Disney World theme park ticket in 1996? That sold for $38.50.

This Series

This story is part of the Orlando Sentinel’s “Disney World at 50” series – a year’s worth of stories leading up to 50th anniversary of the historic opening of Walt Disney World on Oct. 1, 1971. More stories, photos and videos at OrlandoSentinel.com/WDW50.

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Order your copy of “Disney World at 50,” the Orlando Sentinel’s new hardcover keepsake book chronicling the 50th anniversary of the opening of the most magical place on Earth. Supplies are limited. Order your copy at OrlandoSentinel.com/DisneyBook