The St. Francisville Food & Wine Festival Returns

Here’s a recipe for a good time: Take eighteen standout chefs from acclaimed Louisiana hand Mississippi restaurants. Blend their best dishes with fifty distinctive wines, then add a healthy splash of flavor courtesy of a dozen regional microbreweries and craft distilleries. Pile on some award-winning barbecue. Season generously with live music and let rise. Then, roll the whole concoction out at one of the most beautiful outdoor locations in Louisiana at the height of fall, and add people. 

That’s the recipe for the fourth annual St. Francisville Food & Wine Festival—the autumntime event co-produced by The Myrtles Historic Inn and Country Roads magazine and billed as “Louisiana’s most beautiful culinary festival”. This year’s festival returns to the spectacular grounds of The Myrtles in mid-November, packing in more celebrated chefs, notable wine pairings, craft beers and distinctive local spirits than ever before. As in past years, the festival serves as a showcase for Louisiana and Mississippi flavors, presented at chef-manned tasting stations which are arrayed around The Myrtles property. Glass in-hand, attendees get to wander from station to station, sampling dishes while getting to know the culinary geniuses behind some of the region’s best-known restaurants.

Between the dishes, beverage stations pour dozens of carefully-selected wines. In the Craft Beer & Brats garden, seasonal beers and ales from a dozen regional breweries flow while a live band keeps the beat. New for 2022, this year’s festival adds a five-course winemaker dinner featuring Keenan Family Winery of Napa Valley, CA (Friday, Nov. 11), a Bubbles & Barbecue Festival showcasing six acclaimed barbecue chefs and a free-flowing champagne bar (Saturday), and a “Louisiana Spirits” cocktail and spirits-tasting courtyard (Sunday). Tickets for all events go on sale July 1 at stfrancisvillefoodandwine.com. Don’t wait; this event sells out every year.