Wine and dine

The last event Eddie and Beth McDonald will attend before retirement is the Glass City Wine Festival on Saturday.

As owners of Hanover Winery in Hamilton, Ohio, the couple has attended the downtown Toledo event for around five years. After running the winery for 16 years, the plan is to close the property and tasting room in late March. The winery will still be open for events, and retail will be sold at select stores.

“This will be our grand finale,” Eddie said of the festival.

The Glass City Wine Festival, located at the Glass City Center, 401 Jefferson Ave., has an afternoon session from 1 to 4 p.m. on Saturday and an evening session from 6 to 9 p.m, with early access still available — with limited tickets — at 5 p.m. More than 20 wineries from all over Ohio will have tastings at the event, along with area vendors, food options, and workshops like a sip and paint and candle making available for guests to check out, too.

Tickets for the range between $46 and $53 and can be purchased at glasscitywinefestival.com. Designated driver tickets are available for $20 at the door. Partial proceeds from the event go to Parker’s Purpose, a nonprofit organization in Fremont whose mission is to help families of ill and disabled children who are in need of financial assistance.

What to expect

“We’re gonna have a variety of your drys and your sweet, really sweet wines,” Eddie said. “One of the wines that sells better than any is called “Dammit Annie!” It’s named after one of our dogs.”

The owner described the wine as a blackberry blend that’s mixed with the haskap berry. The winery is also bringing its Pink Toad, a sweet blush wine, Raspberry Riesling, Cabernet Sauvignon, and others.

“This is the biggest wine festival that we’ve been a part of,” said Kent Eichenauer, co-owner of Dragonfly Vineyard and Wine Cellar in Urbana, Ohio. “It’s just a very good, classy kind of event.”

The vineyard and winery opened in 2019, he said, noting he owns the operation alongside his wife Connie. Dragonfly has 32 different wines currently, with a range from very dry to super sweet offerings. He plans to bring about 10 wines to the festival.

“A lot of people in Ohio certainly like the sweet wines,” Kent said, adding he’s attended the event for five years. “But we like the dries ourselves. ... We will make sure that we have those at the festival, too.”

A hit every year is the winery’s mulled wine, he said, which tastes similar to a cider — but better. They also sell the mulling spices themselves, so if people want to make it at home, they can do that too.

Being located almost two hours away from the Glass City Wine Festival, he said the event is a great way to reach people he normally wouldn’t see, and gives guests an opportunity to try a “whole lot of different wines at once.”

“What I do hope is that it kind of allows some of the people that are more local to get a taste of some of the wineries a little bit more distant from them,” Kent said. “In a nutshell, what I’d like to see is that some of the customers from there would like to make a weekend trip to visit some of the wineries.”

Kelly Philson, organizer of the Glass City Wine Festival, said she’s excited to bring Ohio wineries under the same roof for the 17th year of the event.

“What makes the Glass City Wine Festival so cool and so unique is that we’re able to bring Toledo wines that they typically wouldn’t have,” she said. Alongside the out-of-towners, Toledo-area wine vendors at the event include Funky Turtle Brewing Company, Urban Pine Winery, Vine2Wine: Custom Winery of Toledo, and Great Black Swamp Brewing Company.

People can participate in tastings using the wine glass they’ll receive when they come in, and they’re also able to buy full bottles from each winery if they’d like to.

The festival has this ‘happy feel’ to it,” the organizer said, noting Toledoans have a niceness to them she always looks forward to seeing since she’s not local to the area.

“I hope that we’re really showcasing Ohio wineries, all the different uniqueness of each winery,” Philson said. “It’s a small business feel. We’re really supporting local. We’re supporting the state of Ohio. We’re supporting our grape farmers.”

Contact Maddie Coppel at: mcoppel@theblade.com.