Great for Geneva, but possibly bad for those of us who prefer our wine and picnics without some blowhard oenophilia yammering on about how a wine is too barnyard, perfectly oaky, or just plain flabby.

Pairings could bring a new demographic of expert wine lover to Geneva. It is intended to serve as the epicenter of Geneva’s new wine scene and looks to be a spectacular addition to the town’s offerings. I saw all the lovely Miss Grapettes in the parade and wondered why the school marching band wasn’t playing “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” I finished my funnel cake and started back to the car when I spotted something called Pairings, which bills itself as “Ohio’s Wine & Culinary Experience.” It opened earlier this year in a renovated carriage house and is in its first stage of becoming a 38,000-square-foot not-for-profit center that will offer cooking classes and workshops on pairing food and wine. Now it feels like a homespun shindig recognizing how wine tourism has helped give this region a kick in the economic keister. It started as a party to celebrate the Concord grapes grown for Welch’s and Smuckers. The JAM-boree (yes, I went there) is an endearing piece of Americana that’s taken place here for 51 years. Geddes photo shoot, but covered in grapes.Ĭan wine regions in France, Italy, or Germany compete with the excitement and glamour of the Miss Grapette pageants? I’d like to see them try. This is an annual festival that features a grape pie eating contest, two parades, grape stomping competitions, the Grape dance, the Grape Bowl, the Miss Grapette pageant, the Junior Miss Grapette pageant, the Young Miss Grapette pageant, the Little Miss Grapette pageant, and an adorable, oddball contest where people dress up their babies in their “grapey-ist” costumes for the title of Junior Baby Grapette. There are shuttles to take you around nothing ruins a vacation faster than flashing blue lights and an inflated auto insurance premium.īut the Cool Whip on top of my Geneva visit was that it coincided with the Geneva Grape Jamboree. Don’t attempt to try them all in one day.

There are 15 wineries roughly within a 10-minute drive of each other here and in neighboring Harpersfield and Madison. The epicenter of the scene is Geneva, a town that has always grown grapes, but only within the past few decades has emerged as a hot spot for wine tourism.

Ohio junior miss pageant