Get your taste buds ready – the Hitchin Wine & Food Festival is back this weekend.
The festival, founded in 2008, will take over the town centre on Saturday – with connoisseurs offered everything from cheese and meat to fine wines and gin.
Hitchin Tilehouse Rotary Club runs the festival, which raises money for good causes and is backed by the Comet.
Andrei Lussmann, owner of the award-winning restaurant chain bearing his name, is this year’s patron. He said: “Hitchin Wine & Food Festival is essential in supporting the town and helping to galvanise the value of our traders.
“I am honoured to help with this festival, and appreciate all the local support we have enjoyed since opening in Sun Street a year ago.”
Festival chairman Fiona Gray added: “The Hitchin Wine & Food Festival is now an unmissable event in the Hitchin calendar, and we anticipate another great event this year with all proceeds benefiting local charities.
“We have been fully booked by stallholders on both the food and wine side for several weeks, and hope next year to expand the event even further to meet increasing demand.
“With opportunities to taste and buy some wonderful food and drink – many of it local – along with some fantastic prizes in the raffle, including dinner and overnight stay at the fabulous Needham Hall, it will be a fun day for all.”
The food festival will be in Market Place from 10am to 4pm on Saturday, with the wine festival held from 12 noon to 6pm in Church House, opposite St Mary’s Church.
The Market Place exhibitors include specialists in pizza, Sri Lankan and South African street food, Brazilian delicacies, French crepes, Caribbean specialities and Japanese curry, rice and sushi.
The wine event will boast bottles from France, Italy, Spain and South Africa, as well as English gins, with free soft drinks for accompanied children.
A raffle will be held at Church House and on the Rotary beer and mulled wine stalls in Market Place, with prizes including a £50 voucher for Lussmanns in Hitchin and a meal voucher from The Radcliffe Arms.
A drop-off point for the Hitchin charity Christmas hampers will also be available on the day.
Entry for the wine exhibition costs £6, with tickets available from fatso.ma/kz8L, HRH Holmes in Churchyard, or on the door.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here