Fermenting Fakery In Tarrant County

Well it's that time of year again. Time to sip some wine, attend snobby wine tasting events, or perhaps just kick back and enjoy gourmet food and live music at the pavilion. Where is all this going on you ask? The French countryside? Northern California? Nope, all this and more fun than you can shake a dead 'possum at is going on this weekend in Grapevine, Texas. It's time for the 19th annual Grapefest. Puhlease.

The City of Grapevine got its name from the mustang grapes that grew wild in the area. That's right, Grapevine has absolutely nothing to do with wine-making. It is not a part of its history, wine-making played no role in the development of the area. The whole wine-making "industry" in Grapevine is the product an overly imaginative convention and visitors bureau. Every city needs a gimmick. Cowtown has cows. Big D has crime. So Grapevine decided their gimmick would be grapes. So they started a festival, worked up a new logo, splashed some grape-colored ink on signs around town and what do you know? Visitors just may mistake the suburban town for a little slice of Napa Valley, right here in north Texas. Not.

I don't mean to imply that promoting the city as a vintners paradise hasn't failed to garner some publicity for the town. A few years ago Grapefest was even featured in a front page article in The Wall Street Journal. Of course, the focus of the story was that the organizers of the festival had stuffed the ballot box to make sure their local wines won all the awards. Any publicity is good publicity I suppose.