Seaside will soon be 'Seeing Red'

If you like wine and fine white sand — preferably not mixed together — Seaside is the place to be Nov. 5-8.

That’s the weekend for the 19th annual Seeing Red Wine Festival, including vintner dinners, outdoor wine tastings, a wine brunch, live music and a wine retail sales tent.

Dave Rauschkolb of Bud & Alley’s restaurant, one of the venues for the festival, told The Log that Seeing Red began with an idea of his business partner, Scott Witcoski.

“He, myself and a handful of other folks organized the first wine festival; Scott called it Seeing Red, the name stuck,” Rauschkolb said. “All the merchants got together, worked on it together — it was an event that started small and grew to be quite a big successful event. We’ve been involved in every wine festival since.”

Despite the name, the festival isn’t limited to red wines, said Executive Director Todd Vucovich of the Destin Charity Wine Auction Foundation, which is one of the three partners organizing the festival. Vucovich said wines used to be divided between Seeing Red and a spring Seeing White festival, but Seeing White is no longer in the calendar.

Vucovich said Southern Wine and Spirits and their suppliers provide a selection of wine, from which the Seeing Red organizers will choose the offerings that meet the level of quality festival-goers expect.

“We have wines from virtually every major wine-producing country,” Vucovich said. “Australia, Argentina, Chile, Spain, Italy, France and of course, the United States. We’re looking for a broad selection ... wines people have seen and then there are other, unique brands they probably won’t have tasted before.”

Seeing Red spokesman Adam Shiland said this is the second year that some of the Seeing Red events are also part of “Taste of THE Beach,” a weekend celebration of Emerald Coast dining organized by Coastal Visions 3000, which has promoted “THE Beach” as an umbrella name for marketing the Northwest Florida region.

Shiland said that by promoting Seeing Red under the Taste of THE Beach label, Taste of THE Beach benefits from being tied to such a successful event, and Seeing Red benefits from “our ability to reach out in a regional capacity to market this event to a regional audience.”

Seeing Red kicks off with a wine dinner at Bud & Alley’s Nov. 5.

Want to go?
Here’s the events:
•Nov. 5, 7 p.m.: Vintner Dinner at Bud & Alley’s with Shug Winery and Opici Wine Company providing the wines. For reservations, call (850) 231-5900.
•Nov. 6, 6 to 8 p.m.: Al Fresco Reserve Wine Tasting in Seaside’s Ruskin Place, with hors d’ouevres. Call (866) 976-7990.
•Nov 7., 1 to 5 p.m.: Grand Tasting throughout Seaside. Call (866) 976-7990.
•Nov. 8, 11 a.m.: A Celebration of Bubbles at Great Southern Café with sparkling wines from around the world. Call (850) 231-7327