Travelers Rest Beer, Wine & Cider Festival at Trailblazer Park

About this event

The Community Tap is adding wine for the first time to its annual festival at Trailblazer Park, expanding an event known for rare beers and cider with a dedicated wine tent and a separately ticketed sparkling wine sabering session. The Travelers Rest Beer, Wine, and Cider Festival takes place Saturday, November 7th, from 2-5pm at the park, 235 Trailblazer Drive.

Now in its fourth year in Travelers Rest, the festival will feature wine selections led by The Community Tap co-founder Ed Buffington, who oversees the shop’s wine program and hosts regular tastings. He will be joined by Kimmie Hale, wine specialist and assistant manager of The Community Tap’s Travelers Rest location, who will help guide guests through the wine tent’s offerings. Buffington will also teach guests how to saber a bottle of sparkling wine, using a blade to remove the top of the bottle.

Alongside the new wine offerings, organizers plan to feature about 40 breweries from across the country, plus Belgian and German breweries, with an emphasis on brewery-only releases and beers rarely available in the Upstate. Cider will have its own tasting area under the park’s permanent pavilion, giving guests access to all three beverage categories in one afternoon.

“We’ve built this festival around giving people a chance to try beers they can’t find in this market,” said Mike Okupinski, co-founder of The Community Tap. “Adding wine gives us a chance to bring that same approach to more guests, with Ed leading the selections alongside our beer and cider offerings.”

The festival’s beer lineup draws on relationships The Community Tap has built with producers across the U.S. and abroad, including breweries in Orange County, California, and Bend, Oregon. Some participating breweries send only a single case of a featured beer, making the festival an opportunity to sample limited releases that rarely reach South Carolina shelves. This year’s lineup also includes beer and cider from several nationally recognized breweries and cideries pouring selections never before available in South Carolina, with the full list revealed to guests on festival day.

Courtland Ashley, general manager of The Community Tap’s Trailside location, will curate the cider selections. A cider specialist who grows her own apples in Greer, Ashley also led a sold-out cider tasting at euphoria.

Guests will receive a festival tasting glass and unlimited samples, with food from local vendors available for purchase. Separate beer and wine tents will anchor the festival grounds, with additional brewery tents surrounding them. The afternoon will feature live music and DJ sets.

The event grew out of a rare beer festival The Community Tap launched 14 years ago. It later became VIBE, the Very Independent Beer Event, which sold out for six consecutive years before the festival moved to Travelers Rest.

General admission tickets are $85 and available through Humanitix . Early entry tickets, which provide access at 1 p.m. for $95, are sold out. The festival is for guests 21 and older; children are not permitted. For tickets and more information, visit https://events.humanitix.com/copy-of-travelers-rest-beer-and-cider-festival

From The Community Tap