Food snobs of Newcastle, ready your Instagram account with the #foodporn hashtag, grab your favourite wine glass and prepare to gorge yourself; the foodie event to end all foodie events is coming to Newcastle!
It’s a bold claim, we know, but it’s one event director, Craig Matthews is happy to stand by when talking about the Food and Wine Expo CTM Events will present this weekend.
“We will bring the biggest and best food event that Newcastle has ever seen, without a doubt,” says Matthews.
The event at Newcastle Entertainment Centre will feature around 100 exhibitors, including local Hunter Valley wineries like Hope Estate, Drayton’s, Bimbadgen and Hungerford Hill as well as food and kitchen product exhibitors, cooking demos from celebrity chefs like Masterchef’s Courtney Roulston and Alice Zaslavsky and free wine appreciation sessions.
“All of those really popular things you find at big events like the Good Food and Wine Show, we have at our show and we’ve really concentrated on taking that to regional areas.
“I know this food and wine show will be the best one that Newcastle has ever seen.”
Newcastle’s close proximity to the Hunter Valley means there will be wine-a-plenty when the event makes its Newcastle debut this weekend, but also making an inaugural inclusion at the expo are beer appreciation sessions.
“For the first time we’ve actually included a beer alley where we will have eight brewers that will be in their own area but also in our appreciation schedule. We’re also scheduling a beer appreciation session each day and those appreciation sessions are all free so people will be able to come along and sit and taste in style and be educated at the same time.
“Newcastle is a real home of craft beer. We’ve got hopes in the back of our mind that in 12 months, 18 months, it will not just be the food and wine expo but the food, beer and wine expo because when it’s all said and done, there is probably equally as much beer drunk in this country than there is wine, for sure.”
One day adult tickets to the Food and Wine Expo are available for $20 and three-day unlimited entry passes are $50.
- Amelia Parrott
