Splatter Wine & Food Event

Attention Organizers — we have attended 4 years in a row and this by far was not at all worth the value you placed on the price tag. For $ 35 ea — we basically rec’d a wine glass. The very small sips the wineries poured could be heard by many grumbling, making the only one beer pourer the most popular as they were the most generous … and to top things off — the broken AC, no music in the tent and very few tables with all the open space were a joke. Consider visiting other local festivals who make these events worth the value.
You got our $ 105 for three this year … but that is it. On top of this … we will share with others to NOT attend unless changes are made.
Very bummed … was looking forward to this event.

This is not your regular wine and arts festival. It is situated in the beautiful Emerald Glen park on East Dublin with many elegant white tents. Kinda classy if you ask me. There was a time we did have not sooo good weather but all is well. It’s still convenient, and walkable from our home.
They start with wine and food tasting in the morning along with some arts activities for the young ones. They follow the event with some live concert and more eating while you relax and sit on the grassy area. For their finale this event always ends with a very entertaining fireworks with music on the background.

We arrived around 5pm and parking was a problem. They don’t allow you to park in the parking lots closest to the park, even though there were plenty of spaces, but luckily we found a spot on the corner across Central Pkwy. There were still lots of people around and a little crowded in some areas. The merchants’ tent didn’t really have anything appealing, but there were plenty of food options (including the food trucks) and entertainment for the children. We didn’t stick around long enough for the concert or the fireworks, because there wasn’t much to do.

Beautiful day, tons of parking in gorgeous Dublin park. This festival is definitely intended for classy folks, wine and food, great combo! The sample tastings were actually pretty good and can’t really complaint for the price of 30.00, you get 20 sampling, plenty to share. I am always impressed as this was my 3^rd year attending, the crowds were great and lots of nice families with kids. Plenty of events for the kiddies and a lego build tent, which the kids loved with folks playing and attendants watching the kids, all free! The free shows were terrific– singers, cultural dancings and magic tricks were all entertaining! Probably one of the best festival I ever attended! So proud of Dublin!

I love Dublin and look forward to each fun event it offers including the awesome St. Patrick Day festival! I was so thrilled to hear about this event I even bought my husband and I our passports ahead of time. I called and were told children are welcome in the tents and no it wasn’t necessary for the passports for them. Which made sense because honestly $ 25 for each of my girls would be ridiculous.
It was pouring rain but hey that wouldn’t keep me away especially since I purchased our passport ahead of time. However as we were leaving our neighbor pulled up and told how the parking situation was nightmare and that they didn’t even bother staying. We decided to try our luck! We saw plenty of signs pointing to parking however no parking. I saw a half used parking lot that was completely closed off and far away street parking. We then saw another sign for event parking! Nope fooled again! It was a huge lot only for Handicap Parking. After much frustration we found street parking. Of course after we get in someone tells us they had shuttle parking from some other lot. Guess we missed that! It would have helped to have anyone who was helping with that. I can only imagine how bad it would be if it wasn’t raining!
After all of that we are ready to eat and drink. Guess what thanks to poor information and poor event planners. We are told we will INDEED need to purchase expensive tickets to allow our girls to go into the tent with us. NO! I’m not spending that much money on two girls who would barely eat anything! We asked for our money back and decided to leave. What a true bummer! I will just stick to the festival in Livermore.

Event was OK for Dublin — liked the concept and hope this type of event is continued.
Parking was good and if we would have have better weather the shuttle service from the off site parking was a very nice touch. (Black Tie Transportation)
A bit confusing walking into the event — no signs directing traffic nor were there any people available to help direct traffic — we trekked across the baseball field in muddy water and made our way to the tent.
Liked the tent filled with food and wine vendors. Top food tastes in my opinion — Last Word (chicken slider), Guy Fieri — Ahi Tuna Taco and pasta, Elephant Bar Chicken Marsala Taste that left a lot to be desired; on the Border (2 tortilla chips with ½ shot glass of guacamole some others I can’t remember.
Wineries I liked: Wente, Tamas — Most of the wineries brought blends of red which I am not a fan of — sure blends are popular — not for me my personal taste
I liked the tables set up in the tent to gather and share the wine and food tastes, the student helpers were very nice and stopped by to clear the tables — great idea and good touch of service.
The outside because of the weather was dead and I felt sorry for the vendors that braved the elements to show up. This event should be two days– I day is not fair to vendors to setup and leave especially if weather comes into play.
The food trucks outside was also a great idea, had the weather been nicer I might have stopped by and purchased food. None of the food vendors seemed busy — probably weather was main reason also giving away tastes in the tent was another for sure.
Overall — like the concept — some things need to be worked out — will give this another try if it happens again.

Thumbs down for the Tasting Pavilion
This review is regarding the paid «Tasting Pavilion» part of the event, not the entire event. The common areas outside of the Tasting Pavilion were well done, lots of vendors, food and activities for the kids. The park is beautiful. The music was nice and free for all attendees. Fireworks at 8pm where nice. I recommend visiting the free event, just not the paid section.
The Tasting Pavilion (very large tent) cost $ 25 in advance ($ 30 at door) to enter which essentially gives you 20 coupons towards sampling wine or food from local establishments. You could barely walk through the place it was so packed. I would guess there were about 40 vendors offering tastings. The lines for almost all food vendors were very long and when you finally made it to the front of the line, most vendors offered a sampling which was unusually small (about 4 of those vendors did have nice portions, but those lines had up to 50 people!). I’d say the serving size for many of these vendors was equivalent to a couple chips and a teaspoon of dip. One vendor offered slices of plain white bread after running out of their other ingredients. I understand a free tasting can be any size, even if really small, because it’s free, however we all PAID for this which made it a rip off.
The wineries were fairly inconsistent in their pours. Most were pouring a bit more than 1 oz for 1 coupon, but some were pouring a few ounces. The lines were long for the wine tastings as well, until towards the end of the event when several vendors had run out of food and certain wines. You can ask them to pour «doubles» which is equivalent to ¼ a glass for most places I went to. Bascially it was challenging to even use up all your 20 coupons, because it requires you to go from one line to the next, doing your sampling while waiting in line. Not fun, relaxing or enjoyable.
We attended with 3 other families and we all left the tasting pavilion to go buy real food from the outside vendors. We should have also brought a bottle of wine with us so we could actually enjoy our wine without waiting in long lines while getting bumped around by other [hungry/​thirsty] attendees. Although there were a few tables, in general wherever you stood in the tent, you were getting bumped around, making very hard to enjoy your chip and drops of wine.
The tasting pavilion experience seemed appropriate if it was free, but it cost $ 25. I suspect the vendors did not see any income from providing food and drink, which would explain the meager servings. Not their fault, they’re running a business, they should be receiving some of that $ 25 and offering more interesting samplings. Same with the wineries, who mostly offered their lower end wines and small pours. I’d be willing to pay more to see the vendors actually make money on top of connecting with the community and turning this into a more attractive offering.

Not bad for City of Dublin’s very first wine & food fête. Love the color palette for the event logo & all event collateral — really fresh & different. I think there were 3 overall major highlights:
1. TASTING PAVILION (see photos)
You get the standard tasting glass and small wine plate upon check in. With a fully tented (& thus shaded) tasting pavilion with live jazz instrumentals ($ 25 for prepaid tickets, $ 30 at the door), it was worth the $ (prepaid, of course). Re: comida, I wouldn’t amazing as nothing rocked my boots, but most everything was solid with decent portion sizes. Each restaurant rep was super friendly and kind enough to pose for my Unilocal photos. The 2 most memorable bites were probably the roasted vegetable sandwich in a mini garlic butter dipped roll from Tomatina (surprising, I know) and the nom little cannoli from Vito’s Express.
Re: wine, loved most everything because they had some of the best Livermore wineries pouring. Each wine and food station had a City of Dublin event volunteer ready with a hole-​puncher to punch the tasting passport we wore hanging on our necks. Here are the participants:
RESTAURANTS
–Airsdream Catering
–Amici’s East Coast Pizzeria
–Auntie Nel’s Fine Foods
–Bombay Nick’s
–Campo di Bocce
–Eddie Pappa’s American Hangout
–Girasole Grill/​Pampered Palate Catering
–Johnny Garlic’s
–Olive Tree Café & Catering
–Tomatina
–Vito’s Express
WINERIES
–Charles R Vineyards
–Concannon Vineyard
–Crooked Vine Winery
–Darcie Kent Vineyards
–Fenestra Winery
–Garré Winery
–Kissos Wines
–Murrieta’s Well
–Nottingham Cellars
–Tamás Estates
–Steven Kent Winery
–Wente Vineyards
–Westover Vineyards
2. ENTERTAINMENT & ATTRACTIONS
Loved the big stage in the middle of the main baseball field. There were a few local bands and a sectioned-​off area as a dance floor.
There were some interesting artists — like this sculpture built out of canned goods (a little weird) & Chef Ray Duey (food sculpture). The thing I think the event team tried to make different from other city wine & food festivals were these hands-​on elements. There was a balloon sculpture station that you can get into, Sterling Johnson (bubblesmith, didn’t know there was such a thing — amazing, see photos) that brought in huge custom made bubble wands made from fishing poles and created blankets of bubbles in the sky… my kids LOVED this! Plus, they provided several bus tubs full of bubble solution with a whole mess of large bubble wands for kids to get into. There was a professional chalk artist, food & wine themed carnival games, a t-​shirt making paint obstacle course & spin art.
3. FIREWORKS
Loved this! It started at 8:04pm and went for about 20 minutes. It’s like 4^th of July in September. We could even see it from our house! It was a great (and different) way to end the festival.
Re: everything else, there were several local mobile food trucks (nothing noteworthy) and a slew of flea-​market-​esque booth vendors in an area named «Culinary & Fine Art Culinary Marketplace.» Dublin police had a meet & greet station and an open cop car that kids could hop inside of — that was neat for my 4 year old. There was also gourmet fondue vendor that was dishing up some cool samples and had a neat product.
Was «Splatter» a success? Passing grade of B+. It’s a clever concept to add a hands-​on element to the event — inviting guests to get involved and messy. Again, overall, I think this virginal event is off to a pretty good start and that it’ll only get better (and hopefully tastier) with experience in years to come.