Vancouver Wine & Jazz Festival

The 18^th annual Vancouver Wine & Jazz Festival is the City of Vancouver’s #1Cultural Arts event of the year. This was our first year attending. The Festival is well sponsored, organized, and attended. We went for Sunday afternoon to hear a Brazilian Jazz singer, Claudia Villela, and stayed to hear Pacific Mambo Orchestra and Arturo Sandoval close the night out in style. Sunday’s 3 out of 5 acts were Latin and in my opinion, the most exciting. I was tired from the day before and snoozed through one of the vocal acts as my jazz partner read his bookclub read on kindle. No matter, the singer was good, but not our style. The sound was overly loud this Sunday. I like my music loud, but somehow it sounded of discord oftentimes when more than few musicians played loud. We noticed this especially when the 20 piece Pacific Mambo Orchestra played. We šat in the center middle under a maple tree shade. Next year, We will try further back if same problem up close.
The Festival does not allow any food or drinks, including water. They do check your bags at entrance and you get a wristband with ticket purchase. Tickets purchased online are discounted vs. Purchasing the day of. Tickets were $ 20 – 30 depending on day.
There were wines for purchase by the 1 oz taster for $ 1 each and by the 5 oz glass for $ 5 – 10 plus. I really liked being able to get a taster before committing to my glasses of bubbly and reisling. Between the two of us, we tried wines from 3 wineries and were happy with the quality. The festival has a page of people’s choice listing inside the program as well.
Although the food offerings were limited, we were happy with our choices. We shared a Vegetarian Falafel, onion rings, and a pulled pork sandwich (German Style).
Glad to have made it to our neighbor city for a day of Jazz, Wine, and food. Yes, life is good.