Charleston Wine and Food

Charleston Wine and Food turns downtown Charleston into a day of moving between pours, plates, and chef-led events rather than settling into one fenced site. The feel is spread across the peninsula, with ticketed tastings, wine seminars, restaurant collaboration dinners, and spirits or cocktail events unfolding in restaurants, hotels, and gathering spaces around the historic core. It leans heavily into Charleston’s dining culture, so the experience is as much about hopping between addresses and reservations as it is about what ends up in the glass.

Late morning often starts with check-in and the first tastings, when people begin threading through Downtown Charleston for early pours and culinary sessions. By afternoon, the pace picks up around chef tastings, beverage seminars, and restaurant events, with short gaps between scheduled blocks as people reset, compare notes, and head to the next venue. Evening shifts the mood toward seated paired meals and higher-profile restaurant collaboration dinners, with a more dressed-up crowd and longer stays at each stop. Across the day, expect a mix of standing-room tastings, seated sessions, and quick walks or short rides between one address and the next.

This festival sits right in Charleston’s restaurant world, so the food has a strong Lowcountry accent even when the format changes from tasting table to seminar to dinner. You are likely to move from seafood bites and oyster pours in one stop to richer plates and cocktails in another, with wine pours woven through much of the day and evening. Must Try:

• Lowcountry seafood
• shrimp and grits
• oysters
• barbecue
• cocktails