If you’ve been following this blog for more than a year—thank you!—you may recall that one of my favorite annual wine-related events is Jazz on the Vine.
It’s held each Mother’s Day weekend at the Ostoff Resort in Elkhart Lake, Wis. The festival kicks off on Friday evening, typically with three acts, and concludes on Saturday night after four or five additional acts have played.
Each of those nights, once the formal schedule has concluded, the music continues into the wee hours of the morning at the Lola’s on the Lake restaurant on the resort property. Then on Sunday morning, a jazz brunch concludes the weekend.
The main festival takes place under a huge tent, and during stage changes, attendees flock to the “back” of the enclosed space where tables are set up and dozens of wines are available for tasting. Some couples will buy a bottle and take it back to their seats along with a couple of plastic cups. Others go all-out and bring their own wine glasses.
The 2013 Jazz on the Vine lineup is stellar, with three acts that could headline any jazz/smooth jazz festival anywhere in the world: Acoustic Alchemy, Fourplay and the Larry Carlton Quartet.
Better still, Acoustic Alchemy has a wine-related tune that it could play. It’s called “Senjo Wine,” and you can listen to it here. And Fourplay has a song called “Elixir” that one could at least imagine as a “wine song.”
In doing my research for this year’s festival, I was surprised to learn that there’s another festival in another location with exactly the same name. And it has even more of a wine connection than the Elkhart Lake original.
The 6th annual Jazz on the Vine event takes place over six weekends in New York’s Long Island wine country. It’s the star attraction of the Long Island Winterfest, and it continues through March 24 at numerous locales each weekend.
A vast majority of the performances take place at the region’s wineries, and one of the hotels hosts “Saturday Night Jazz Sessions” throughout the event. You can learn more and access a full schedule here.
This year, the event in Elkhart Lake and the event on Long Island share something else besides a name: a performer. Matt Marshak has already appeared at Peconic Bay Winery, as you can see and hear in this clip, and he’s also booked for May 11 at the Osthoff Resort. One Jazz on the Vine provides a preview of another Jazz on the Vine.
If you live near either Elkhart Lake or Long Island, you owe it to yourself to soak in some cool sounds while sampling some nice wines.
Tomorrow: One more reason to visit Long Island wine country.
