This Food Festival in History #1 Disney's Food and Wine Festival

Oct 17

Oct 17 This Food Festival in History #1 Disney's Food and Wine Festival

Hello and welcome to today’s episode of This Food Festival in History! We are breaking from our usual so we can try a new type of thing and instead of looking at the history of a single food we’ll be checking out the history of a food festival! Featuring Disney’s Food and Wine Festival!

This international festival is held yearly in Walt Disney World in EPCOT. Currently running for a few months straight, it offers a growing number of booths and food features from all around the world. The booths are spaced all over the park and offer a few food items and alcohol items to sample the taste of the region or country represented. You can also find special events or offerings that have evolved throughout the years. Things like cooking courses, demonstrations, special tastings, and Eat to the Beat, where you can eat and listen to bands through the decades.

How did all of this start?

Let’s go back to 1981. This is 10 years after the opening of Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.The Walt Disney World Village, now called Disney Springs, opens the first Wine Festival. This festival features local winemakers but not food. It becomes a yearly festival. In 1994 we see Epcot start the Flower and Garden Festival. They ran it for 38 days to celebrate Disney’s character-themed topiaries and with a larger focus on exhibits, gardening education, and entertainment for all ages.

The success of this festival prompted Disney to move the Wine festival to Epcot and in 1996 the first Epcot International Food and Wine Festival opened and runs from September 29th through October 27th. It’s said that this time of year was picked to help bring traffic during their slow seasons and credit is given to George Kalogridis who ran Epcot from ‘95 until 2000. This first festival had 25 booths, some which you can still find serving yearly. If you wander through and get Canada’s cheddar cheese soup, Poland’s pierogies, or Germany’s Apple Strudel, you’ll be having some of those original foods that have been kept.

It did not take long to expand. One year later Disney held a benefit gala and Chef Julia Child attended as an honored guest with other culinary big names. They raised money for hunger relief organizations and this was enough to have Disney start expanding festivals at Epcot. Today it is known as the festival park. Epcot hosts four regular festivals yearly: Festival of the Arts, Flower and Garden Festival, Food and Wine Festival and Festival of the Holidays. June and July seem to be the only months they take off from the festivals.

Most years after 1997 you can see something new to show the growth of offerings. In 1998 we got the Art of Winemaking for wine-tasting lectures and seminars ran by master sommeliers. 2001 brought in Rovery Mondavi family wines to teach winemarking from harvest to bottling. 2005 brought a cooking school and interactive experiences as well as the inaugural year for the Food and Wine Race for the Taste 10k.

In 2010 a Half Marathon replaced the 10k and Cirque Du Soleil La Nouba hosted the Party for the Senses. 2014 ups the days of the festival to 53 but by 2021 it’s upped again to 129 days and starts lasting from July until November.

The events have always been a mix of fun demonstrations and education with the general tasting opportunities to share cultures from around the world. This helped the event grow into a bigger experience for visitors.

So did they also recreate this with Disney Land California?

I had heard that the festival is held at both but are they the same?

Disney California Adventure began its version in 2006. They ran until a major rework closed them from 2011 til 2015 and the covid pandemic closed them in 2021. (Don’t worry it’s back!) In 2006 the festival had only 2 food booths and now they host about 12 booths and have multiple other locations providing festival food and drinks.

Instead of being focused internationally, the theme is around cuisine made fresh from ingredients grown in the state of California. They may have a few booths but more than 80 dishes and drinks that are California-inspired. They also bring in musical entertainment, crafts, demonstrations, and tasting seminars similar to Epcot. Unlike Epcot though, DisneyLand also has the festival out in Downtown Disney which does not require a park ticket. You can wander into the restaurants to try special dishes at the sit down locations and get a little of the festival at any time.

The Food and Wine Festivals of Epcot and Disneyland Adventure California are two separate festivals that provide the same joy of food and culture to the people. They have expanded to bring more than just plates and drinks with their demonstrations, classes, and experiences to give people more options to explore and learn about the offerings, international and local. This is definitely a stop that is worth anyone’s time. Thank you for watching this episode of This Food Festival in History. Please like and subscribe for more!

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