Urban Wine Festival

This was a really good idea– 24 wines from around the world, a great range of rosé, red, whites, sparkling, all for $ 2/​taste or $ 6/​glass. The website does a really good job of setting up their mission of «Drink Better Wine,» so I was really excited to find some great new wines to buy/​drink all summer.
Saturday dawned and it was HOT out. There was a seminar/​panel at noon, but we didn’t go to that, so hopefully someone else can weigh in. Around 3pm we arrived to kind of a chaotic check in. We hadn’t purchased tickets in advance, and decided to split a 6 tasting card so we could try a few and get a feel for the place and buy some more tastes if we wanted to. We probably stood there, at the front of the line, for several minutes while the people working the check in table figured out how they wanted to be set up. This was an hour after they started?
Anyway, we stepped into the parking lot and saw that everything was spread out among four tents around the perimeter, with tall top tables in the center, right in the heat rising off of the blacktop. We stopped at the first tent to ask what the rhyme and reason were between where each wines were located, and found that there wasn’t one. Wines weren’t organized by region or type, but rather you could find a range at each tent. At first I was surprised and confused so we had to take a few minutes to create a game plan from the combo of the wine guide book (LOVED the book), and our tasting card. But as more people came, I think the range worked because everyone wasn’t crowded around one certain tent.
The wines themselves were ok. We ended up tying 12 wines but only walked away with one (a delicious rosé, #yeswayrosé). We came in and out a bit throughout a couple of hours and only heard a band play once so I’m guessing the music portion picked up later in the evening.
The weather isn’t anyone’s fault but one thing I noticed, and kept noticing, was that the people working the event were really crabby about it. There were several times when I walked up to a tent and there would be several people standing or sitting behind the table fanning themselves or wiping their brow and not step up to help me or ask what I wanted to try. The people working the tent also seemed to be somewhat under-​educated. There was usually one person doing a lot of talking but maybe 3 – 4 others who didn’t know pricing or details about the wines they were serving. There was a price list available, so I’m not sure why they didn’t have it behind the tents.
Overall, I was kind of disappointed by the Urban Wine Festival. I hope that they continue to do it though, as I think it will get better with time.

24 wines under 4 tents in a parking lot mid-​day, 93 degrees, smallest tasting ticket is 6 pours for $ 12. What could go wrong? The wines got unpleasantly warm unless gulped, tasting gamey. One fabulous dry French rose in tent 2 was iced to perfection and we got it when it was just opened. We lasted 30 minutes in the heat and fled to Bakersfield for a tequila sampler.