Quick Guide to the Bardolino Wine Festival

I love festivals and I love wine but I hadn’t heard of the Bardolino Wine Festival until Inghams suggested I try their festival package. I thought it would be the perfect way to spend the last week of my 20s, especially as my friend Chloe was invited too. So off we trundled to Verona Airport to catch the quick 30-minute transfer into Bardolino.

The Bardolino Wine Festival

As soon as we arrived we were given an official wine carrier that went round our neck. This was so we could carry our glasses of wine but keep our hands free. Loved them. It cost €3 and came with the first glass of wine included. From then on we could swap our glass in for a new one with every sample of the 100s of wine varieties the Bardolino region produces. A glass was just €1!

The Bardolino Wine Festival has been going for 86 years and lasts five days. Little tents are set up around Lake Garda stretching for most of the Bardolino lake front showing off the best of the wines made here. Some people were buying huge crates, others bought bottles to sit on the pier and enjoy, but we stuck to as many glasses of different varieties as possible.

I’d normally be all over the reds but I had a really bad throat from the Oktoberfest cold (not the steins) and they were making me feel worse. So, poor old me, I had to stick with the fizzy pinks, to give them their technical name, for day one and enjoy the refreshing fizz as it cleared my throat.

Food at the festival

The food at the Bardolino Wine Festival seemed almost as important as the wine.

Our first foodie port of call was to try the polenta so many of the stalls were advertising, alongside some sausages. We actually had just one portion between us, so we could try more things, but that one was definitely enough for two. It was €5. The polenta was err, nice, yeah, I’d have it again, just not in that week. The sausages on the other hand were delish and I would’ve happily eaten them every day.

We also tried the fried fish platter – calamari and whitebait better than any I’d had before and I’ve had a lot of both. There was a lot of risotto stalls too, and cheese, and ham and pizza, but there just wasn’t enough time for it all.

And of course, we were in Italy, if you don’t try the gelato within an hour or two of landing you’re doing it wrong. We topped off our day’s feasting with big pistachio gelato sundaes and scoffed the crisps that came with them too.

I love a food festival. If you do too, check out this great list of weird food festivals around the world.

More festival fun

The festival isn’t just about wine and food, there are events planned throughout the five days to show off the local culture beyond the vineyards. There was a kids run, which we were accidentally in prime position for while we enjoyed a wine and a sit down, a car show, a photography gallery from the locals and wine-making demonstrations too.

At one point we were about to enjoy an Aperol Spritz – the aperitif of Italy – when we were surrounded by a feathered band playing some delightful tunes. It was so loud we had to move, but we enjoyed their outfits and tooting from afar.

We were all excited for the wine awards and got ourselves a good spot to watch from, and then realised that, of course, they were in Italian. We stuck around for a bit but with no clue what was going on decided to go and find out which wine we thought was best, first hand.