News > Review: Asheville Wine + Food Festival 2014 + lots of other fun mountain wanderings!

You can always count on Asheville to be a fun weekend getaway from Charleston.  I happily escaped the scorching 99 degrees in Charleston this past weekend and retreated to the cool mountains for the Annual Asheville Wine + Food Festival, where I ate more than anyone should ever eat and loved every minute of it!

Asheville Wine and Food Sweets

Friday night was all about decadence with an event called “Sweet.”  As you can imagine from the name, it was several hours of yummy desserts all set inside the beautiful Grove Arcade – a hip area of downtown where there are lots of great bars and restaurants and unique shops. In addition to that we had a lot of fun with this crazy bottle of champagne that not only lit up, but was full of gold flakes called Karat and an awesome whisky named Defiant.  After that we took a walk down Lexington Avenue and ended up at a cool new vintage-inspired place called the Crow & the Quill – a dark, sexy bar with lots of old, carved-wood couches and writing desks that seemed to be just begging me to sit down and write some poetry.  No trip to Asheville is complete without a late night stop at Rosetta’s Kitchen.  Of course, there are lots of vegan and vegetarian options.  It is Asheville, after all.

Defiant Whisky

On Saturday was the signature event – the Grand Tasting – at the U.S. Cellular Center (but don’t ask the locals where that is because to them it’s still called the Civic Center and you may just confuse everyone).  With two entire floors of this large venue full of food and wine vendors, we spent the whole afternoon there making friends and enjoying all the local yumminess.  If you have a yearning for chocolate, beer, or moonshine, there was a lot of it and it was all super fresh and local.

After tasting lots of wine, we decided it would be fun to do some shopping (because that’s obviously the best time to go shopping!) and we ended up at the handmade clothing store Royal Peasantry for, oh, about 3 hours.  Store owner and clothing designer Danielle Miller has shown her work at Charleston Fashion Week. Think leather and feathers and lots of awesome shiny things, all made from recycled clothes, bags, shoes, etc.  Our lovely stylist Leanne put up with us as we had a blast trying on pretty much everything in the store.

Feather headdress from Royal Peasantry

All that shopping made us hungry so we went to Zambra’s Tapas Bar and made some new friends and ended up running into Charleston Fashion Week music director and DJ Arthur Bros and his beautiful model wife Sandra West.  We then made our way to the Jack of the Wood pub to hear some gypsy jazz by The Resonant Rogues where I danced like a crazy fool to Miss Sparrow playing the accordion and loved every minute of it!   We even briefly caught up with Kenny the Clown as well as figurative painter Sandusky Parris in between songs.

The Resonant Rogues

Sunday was perfect with a late brunch with lots of friends at the outdoor patio at The Southern Kitchen and Bar.  We learned that there was a cool indie, DIY, and entrepreneurial arts festival called Big Love Festival happening just down the street so we made our way there where I got an awesome antler necklace from Amber of Amber Hatchett Designs.  She’s my jewelry girl whenever I go up there!  After that, we headed over to New Mountain, a newly renovated venue in Asheville, where they were having their first outdoor concert featuring the famous Larry Keel Experience.

New Mountain Asheville Venue

I was having so much fun, I’m not really sure how anyone pried me away.   Thanks for the Love and Laughter, AVL!  See you soon for the Lake Eden Arts Festival in the fall!

– xoxo

Olivia Pool