Rose Stanton, owner of destination management company Wine Country Destinations (based across California’s wine-producing region), has been planning MPI Northern California’s Corks & Forks event since its inception in 2015. The vinous event has become a chapter favorite, filled with friendly competition, education, and some of the area’s top wines and caterers.
A longtime chapter member, Stanton says one day she was approached by then-chapter president Joey Nevin to create a new event. “I just thought, why not incorporate the hospitality end of [the industry] with wine and food, which everybody loves, and make it a bit of a competitive type of event with an education component?” Each year, the event begins with an hour-long session on a hospitality-related topic, then moves into the main event, where area wineries team up with a regional caterer at stations to craft the best food-and-wine pairing. Attendees vote for their favorite duo, and the first-, second-, and third-place winners receive a medal. Stanton says the exciting “brown bag” wine raffle rounds out the agenda, where winners pick a lunch bag filled with a mystery wine bottle as their prize.
This year marked Corks & Forks’ 10th anniversary, and the event was held in late May at the Treasure Island Administration Building in San Francisco. While much of what attendees love about it remains the same each year, a few things have changed. Stanton says attendance has more than doubled since the event’s debut, sitting at around 250 attendees this year. She also notes caterers and participating wineries are incorporating more vegetarian and mocktail options to be inclusive of attendee needs and preferences.
Stanton’s favorite parts of planning Corks & Forks not only include helping area caterers and wine producers garner business, but also the pure joy that comes from producing a gathering that has become such a hit. “It is not your regular type of event,” she says. “It has a little flair to it. It’s just really fun.”
