Fox Run Vineyards, near Penn Yan, holds an annual garlic festival and it just happens to be this weekend! Joe and I went up yesterday and had a nice time, enjoying a perfect day and some tasty food.

It seemed like we were never going to get there as there was a huge back-up in Watkins Glen due to their Italian Festival (which I’m sure was a fun time with great food as well, but we had already chosen our destination). Eventually though, we arrived at Fox Run Vineyard and we were lucky enough to snag a nice, shady parking spot.

We decided to eat first (as our layover in Watkins Glen had pushed us well into lunchtime) before browsing around the vendors. They had set up a ticket system, so you first purchased tickets for your food (most of the meals were 6-7 tickets, wine 4-6, cookies and ice cream 1-2) and then exchanged the tickets for the food at another tent down the line. It moved fairly quickly, so we were eating almost instantly.

We chose to split a Garlic BBQ Pulled Pork sandwich and also shared a box containing a roasted garlic bulb and brie, with baguette slices and grapes. We also each got a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie (not bad!) and a glass of wine, with Joe going for the dry riesling and me choosing the sweeter regular riesling (I’m really not a big wine drinker, so I tend towards the fruity girl drinks).

The food was excellent! The pulled pork sandwich came on a toasted submarine-style roll. The pork was deeply flavored with roasted garlic and Carolina-style sauce, very moist and soft, and as melt-in-your-mouth as meat can get. I think we both could have easily eaten a full sandwich ourselves. The bun was, in some ways, fairly ordinary, but the toasting was a good touch and it didn’t get in the way of the flavor of the meat.

After the warm sandwich, we tucked into the roasted garlic and brie. I don’t think there is anything more perfect to eat on a nice summer day. We had moved over to sit in the shade (opened up the trunk of the car to “tail-gate”). I would have preferred the baguette was toasted and the garlic warm, but I also understand that the volume of visitors taking away these boxes would have made it difficult to regulate that well. Again, the bread was somewhat on the boring side - a bit more crustiness would have been appreciated, especially if it wasn’t toasted, but it didn’t get in the way of the garlic or brie. I did appreciate the substantial amount of brie in the wedge provided! I also realized that we do not do enough garlic roasting at home, a dilemma that will be remedied.

After finishing our wine, we strolled around the grounds. There were, of course, many folks with garlic and various garlic products for sale. Many of the vendors had garlic braids for sale, some adorned with ribbons and dried flowers and some without. Eckberry Farms of Cohocton, NY had a demonstration of the process. I thought about purchasing a braid, but as my plans involved using any of the garlic purchased that day, I would have felt bad tearing apart the braids.

I ended up buying a pound of German White hard-neck garlic, a pound of soft-neck, and a pound of garlic scapes from Palermo’s Garlic. Frank Palermo, the man on the right side of the photo above, recommended the hard-neck for roasting and the soft-neck for use in things like spaghetti sauces. I’ll need to look back through all of the early spring blog archives for all of the good garlic scape recipes that people were posting!

There was also a cooking demonstration (featuring that one guy that is always on News10Now, I think), vendors with other foods (I tasted a maple cream on a pretzel stick that was tasty, but I don’t buy maple products at garlic festivals!), and the Corning Museum of Glass’s hot glass show (that is a museum I definitely recommend a visit to)!

We ended our visit with a little bit of wine tasting:

If you’re not too far away, there is still time to enjoy the festival today. Otherwise, I would definitely recommend putting it on your calendar for next year, or checking out one of the other garlic festivals coming up!