We’re back in South Florida for the Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival. This show gets bigger every year. Don’t get me wrong, it was always big, but this year I struggled to get good photos of the many celebrity chefs as the crowd was huge and busy. I am not referring to the Grand Tasting Tent; just one of the many night events on the roster, a favourite of mine called the Wine Spectator’s Best of the Best, held again at the legendary Fontainebleau Miami Beach — the same hotel in the opening scene of Goldfinger, starring Sean Connery as James Bond.

Star Power

With the Food Network as title sponsor there were celebrity chefs like Sunny Anderson, Paula Deen, Guy Fieri, Bobby Flay, Ingrid Hoffmann, Robert Irvine, Emeril Lagasse, Masaharu Morimoto, Marc Murphy, Pat and Gina Neely, Rachael Ray, Aarón Sanchez and Michael Symon, attracting legions of fans.

Why do we go?

I was asked why a wine columnist from a Jamaican paper was interested in covering this event. My answer was simple — when you have the largest consumer wine and food event in the world a mere 90 minutes away, wine lovers should be there; if not, they need to hear about it, see the highlights, learn something new or get a few ideas for their own events back home. As a wine lover, I stick to wine-focused events like the Best of the Best and the more studious wine-tasting seminars that are usually hosted by the wine makers or winery owners themselves in very cool, quiet rooms.

The Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival presented by FOOD & WINE is produced by Florida International University (FIU) and Southern Wine & Spirits of Florida with the support of the Miami Beach Visitors & Convention Authority and the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs. The festival, in its 11th year, benefits FIU’s Chaplin School of Hospitality and Tourism Management and the Southern Wine & Spirits Beverage Management Center. To date, the festival has raised more than US$14 million for the school.

Here are a few highlights of the Wine Spectator’s Best of the Best.

(Photos: Christopher Reckord)