9 Best Fall Wine Festivals in 2025

It’s been five years since the pandemic and we’ve come full circle. After years of virtual tastings, Zoom wine hours, and digital substitutes, the pendulum has swung back toward authentic human connection over shared experiences. Now in 2025, wine festivals are back in full swing.

“Wine tourism market in the U.S. is expected to grow at a CAGR of 14.0% from 2024 to 2030,” according to Grandview Research.

Research has long shown a link between a positive social life and good health. We’re wired for connection, especially connections forged through sensory-rich experiences like wine appreciation. The last few years of isolation and technological advances in algorithmic social engineering and AI have show this. After years of screen-mediated interactions, we hunger for experiences that engage all five senses simultaneously.

This autumn, as vineyard leaves turn crimson and gold, nine exceptional festivals offer the perfect opportunity to rediscover the transformative power of in-person wine experiences. From intimate tastings to grand celebrations, each promises what no virtual event ever could: genuine human connection through the shared appreciation of one of civilization’s oldest pleasures.

Let’s explore nine fall wine festivals worth the trip.

1. Bardolino Wine Festival – Lake Garda, Italy (Early October 2025)

The crystalline waters of Lake Garda provide more than just a stunning backdrop for the Bardolino Wine Festival. They create a natural gathering place where human connections form as easily as ripples across water. Scheduled for early October 2025, this celebration transforms the picturesque municipality of Bardolino into a vibrant hub of sensory experiences and meaningful interactions.

The festival’s 96-year legacy provides historical depth that resonates with attendees. Drawing over 100,000 wine enthusiasts who stroll along Bardolino’s waterfront during the festive weekend, the event creates a density of human experience where serendipitous encounters become the rule rather than the exception.

Wine tasting here seems to be a communal ritual. Watch as strangers debate the merits of a particular vintage, their initial disagreement evolving into animated conversation and eventual laughter. Observe how shared appreciation for a perfect food pairing creates instant camaraderie between people who minutes before were complete strangers. I love this about Italy.

2. Beaujolais Nouveau Festival – Beaujeu, France (November 20-23, 2025)

I love a good Beaujolais and if there’s one wine festival that I want to prioritize this fall, it’s the Beaujolais Nouveau Festival. Scheduled for November 20, 2025 (the third Thursday of November) and the following weekend, this event transforms the town of Beaujeu into a laboratory of human connection where wine serves as both catalyst and medium.

The festival’s central ritual, the midnight uncorking of the year’s first bottles, creates a shared moment of anticipation. As the clock strikes twelve, thousands of strangers become unified in experience, their collective gasps and cheers creating an emotional resonance that transcends individual appreciation.

The village of Beaujeu celebrates with the Sarmentelles festival, which includes a torchlit procession and ceremonial tapping of barrels at midnight.

The democratic nature of Beaujolais Nouveau itself reinforces inclusivity. As a young, unpretentious wine meant for immediate enjoyment rather than aging, it breaks down the intimidation barriers that sometimes accompany wine appreciation. Here, first-time tasters and seasoned connoisseurs stand on equal footing.

Interestingly, Beaujolais Nouveau exemplifies how physical gatherings can influence broader cultural moments in ways virtual events cannot. Numerous cities worldwide, including Paris, now host their own celebrations, creating a global synchronicity of experience. One Parisian boat tour even offers Beaujolais Nouveau tastings while cruising the Seine, combining the wine experience with iconic city views.

3. Chablis Wine Festival – Chablis, France (Late October 2025)

In the rolling hills of Burgundy, where monks first mapped vine-friendly soils in the Middle Ages, the Chablis Wine Festival offers something increasingly rare in our hyper-connected world: focus. This annual celebration, occurring on the third or fourth weekend of October, has become one of the most important wine events in France, drawing people from around the world to connect and discover various wine types.

The festival’s specialization extends to its programming, featuring comparative tastings across all Chablis appellations from Petit Chablis to Grand Cru, seminars on the region’s distinctive Kimmeridgian soils, and dinners where every course pairs with different expressions of this iconic white wine.

The landscape itself—stark, chalky hills covered in orderly vines—reinforces this message of focus. Standing in a Grand Cru vineyard during the festival, looking across the valley as late autumn light catches the yellowing leaves.

4. Hawaii Food & Wine Festival – Multiple Islands, Hawaii (October 18-November 2, 2025)

While most established wine festivals anchor themselves in historic production regions, Hawaii boldly challenges this convention with its sprawling Food & Wine Festival spanning three islands over three weekends. The Hawaii Food & Wine Festival runs from October 18 to November 2, 2025, offering epicurean experiences across multiple Hawaiian islands.

This geographic audacity mirrors the festival’s larger ambition: to redefine wine culture through the lens of Hawaii’s unique multicultural identity. Here, traditional European wine paradigms collide with Pacific Rim influences, creating something entirely new.

The festival deliberately positions wine within a broader culinary context, featuring collaborations between international vintners and Hawaii’s innovative chefs. Sessions explore unprecedented pairings: aged Riesling with fresh poke, Syrah with kalua pork, sparkling wines with tropical fruits. These combinations complement each other and create dialogues between disparate cultural traditions.

5. New York City Wine & Food Festival – New York City (October 15-19, 2025)

The New York City Wine & Food Festival (#NYCWFF) is scheduled for October 15-19, 2025. This metropolitan celebration transforms America’s most dynamic city into a vast, multidimensional wine experience that epitomizes the post-pandemic renaissance of live events.

The democratic spirit of the festival creates an atmosphere where hierarchies momentarily dissolve. In a city known for its status consciousness, NYCWFF creates spaces where sommeliers chat with novices, celebrity chefs serve street food, and exclusive wine allocations become temporarily available to all. This accessibility isn’t just ideological—it’s visceral. You can observe the genuine delight on people’s faces when they discover something new, an emotional transparency often masked in digital interactions.

The timing of the festival in mid-October captures autumn in New York at its peak, with Central Park’s foliage providing a dramatic natural counterpoint to the city’s architectural geometry. This seasonal alignment reminds attendees of wine’s connection to agricultural cycles and the passing of time, a grounding reality easily forgotten in the perpetual present of digital life.

What makes NYCWFF particularly fascinating is how it draws a diverse audience spanning multiple generations. While industry reports show that wine consumption demographics skew older (with Boomers representing 41% of regular wine drinkers according to Wine Intelligence), NYCWFF attracts substantial numbers of Millennials and Gen Z attendees. These younger participants, though they may consume less wine by volume than their elders, show greater interest in the stories, processes, and experiences surrounding wine.

As you navigate the festival, moving from grand tastings in convention halls to intimate seminars in boutique venues, you’re participating in something that transcends mere consumption, NYCWFF reminds us that the most meaningful connections still happen offline, glass in hand, face to face.

6. Epcot International Food & Wine Festival – Orlando, Florida (August 28-November 22, 2025)

Perhaps no fall wine festival better embodies our conflicted relationship with authenticity than Disney’s mammoth Epcot International Food & Wine Festival. The Food and Wine Festival runs from August 28 to November 22, 2025, and is one of four annual festivals hosted at Epcot throughout the year.

Let’s address the elephant in the room: wine purists dismiss this festival as commercial simulacra—a sanitized, family-friendly approximation of wine culture lacking the gritty authenticity of European traditions. Yet this criticism misses something crucial: with its 86-day run and millions of visitors, this may be America’s most influential wine education platform.

The festival transforms Epcot’s World Showcase into a global wine tour, with over 30 marketplace kiosks offering regional cuisines and wines from every continent. Visitors can sample Greek Assyrtiko beside a replica Parthenon in the morning and Argentine Malbec near a fabricated Andean village by afternoon.

This global accessibility extends to the festival’s educational approach, with sessions deliberately designed for novices featuring clear, jargon-free language. The “Eat to the Beat” concert series pairs wine with popular music, further democratizing the experience.

7. Stuttgart Wine Festival – Stuttgart, Germany (Late August-Early September 2025)

While technically beginning in late summer, the Stuttgart Wine Festival extends into early autumn, earning its place among fall’s most significant wine gatherings. Germany’s largest wine festival features 124 stalls decorated with vines, serving traditional Swabian dishes alongside regional wines in a harmonious atmosphere that attracts increasing numbers of visitors annually.

What distinguishes Stuttgart is its rejection of spectacle in favor of something increasingly rare: genuine communal pleasure. Unlike festivals that compete for attention with elaborate entertainments, Stuttgart focuses simply on good wine, regional food, and social connection.

The festival’s physical layout reinforces this philosophy, with long communal tables encouraging conversation between strangers. The absence of loud music creates space for actual dialogue. The emphasis on regional Swabian specialties like kässpätzle (cheese noodles) alongside local wines celebrates the deep connection between culinary and viticultural traditions.

8. Merano Wine Festival – Merano, Italy (November 7-11, 2025)

Nestled in the shadow of the Italian Alps, where crisp mountain air mingles with the heady bouquet of world-class wines, the Merano Wine Festival represents wine culture’s aristocratic frontier. This is not merely a tasting event but an elaborate social performance where the wine elite gather to define what excellence means in 2025. The 34th edition is scheduled for November 7-11, 2025 in Alto Adige, Italy, and it stands as a deliberate counterpoint to more rustic, accessible celebrations.

Merano embraces a cosmopolitan approach. The festival’s epicenter is the Kurhaus—a Liberty-style architectural masterpiece where wine’s global sophistication is on full display. Here, hundreds of producers present their wares not with humble pride but with meticulous precision, each vintage a statement in an ongoing discourse about status and taste.

The festival’s structure reflects this stratified approach to wine culture. With approximately 7,000 visitors attending over five days and around 1,000 exhibitors presenting their products, the event is deliberately segmented: dedicated areas for Italian wines, international selections, organic and biodynamic offerings, and an exclusive section for champagne. Each space becomes its own micro-community with distinct social codes and expectations.

9. Atlanta Mimosa Festival – Historic 4th Ward Skate Park, Atlanta (October 18, 2025)

Closing our global tour with something unexpected, Atlanta’s Mimosa Festival represents wine culture’s populist frontier, challenging conventional notions of what constitutes a “proper” wine event. The Atlanta Mimosa Festival takes place at Historic 4th Ward Skate Park on October 18, 2025.

This unapologetically playful festival celebrates wine’s most accessible daytime cocktail—the modern mimosa, elevating it from brunch staple to festival centerpiece. Multiple bars offer creative variations: classic orange, berry-infused, tropical, spicy, even savory options with ingredients like cucumber and basil.

The setting, a converted skate park in a revitalized urban neighborhood, deliberately breaks from wine’s traditional pastoral associations. Instead of rolling vineyards, attendees enjoy mimosas against a backdrop of skate ramps, street art, and Atlanta’s evolving skyline.

The crowd skews younger and more diverse than traditional wine festivals. The atmosphere blends wine tasting with block party energy, featuring DJs, food trucks, and lawn games.

Which fall wine festival will you attend?

Wine festivals offer something increasingly rare in our algorithmically curated lives: genuine serendipity. The unplanned conversation that changes your perspective, the unexpected wine that becomes a new favorite, the spontaneous invitation to join strangers who become friends. These moments can’t be programmed or predicted. They happen only when we show up physically, open to the unscripted possibilities of human interaction.

Which fall festivals are you excited about?