Virtual teaser to kick off year of activities
Cincy Wine Festival raises money for 30-plus charities.
Cincinnati International Wine Festival organizers had hoped as recently as last October to hold the festival as normal in 2021, with thousands of people sampling and learning about hundreds of wines from all over the world in a festival atmosphere.
“Once we saw the (COVID-19) spikes anticipated for the winter, we knew it wouldn’t be feasible,” said Kelly Weissmann, executive director of the festival.
Instead, the 2021 festival will take place in stages. The Russ Miles Memorial Golf Tournament has been delayed to August, the Winery Dinner Series to September, and the big in-person festival to October. But the kick-off event will be the Cincy Wine Fest@Home virtual event on Thursday, March 18. According to Weissmann, the decision to hold a virtual teaser event in March was about more than simply returning a sense of normalcy to people who look forward to this festival every year. The fest is a nonprofit that typically raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for over 30 local charities every year.
“Our charities have been the hardest hit (by the pandemic),” she said. “Food banks, health and human services. We started thinking about what we could do to keep money flowing to these charities while keeping people safe and giving them something of what they expect from the festival. We looked around and saw that some people were having success with virtual events.”
The Wine Fest@Home will be an interactive Zoom event where experts from all over the world will give demos on cocktail mixology, wine and cheese pairings, and other topics. To make the event more personally engaging to folks at home, each expert will be assigned a “household,” with 24 participants each (there will be 400 households overall).
“We’ve been doing this for 30 years so we have a strong network,” Weissmann said. “We reached out to wineries that normally would’ve participated and we signed up the first 18 who committed.”
Each expert will give a talk lasting approximately 30 to 40 minutes, with a Q&A afterward. Weissmann said there is no specific end time for the event.
“It will really depend on how talkative people are and how long they keep asking questions,” she said. “At the actual event, people really talk to the experts, so we expect the same for virtual.”
Weissmann said that when people buy tickets, they can request to be placed into the same household with friends, but there’s no
guarantee.
“There are friends out there who haven’t been in the same room for awhile, so it can be a girls’ night in,” she said.
When you buy a ticket, you’ll select one of three wine kits to go with the virtual fest. The Explorer kit ($75) includes three curated, hand-picked bottles of wine, two shatter-proof, dishwasher-safe wineglasses, and a virtual tasting lead from an expert.
The Enthusiast kit ($150) includes everything in the Explorer plus a Tito’s vodka cocktail kit, cheese samples from Murray’s Cheese, snacks, and other swag. Weissman said people can use tasting leads to purchase ingredients in advance to mix and pair along with the experts.
Finally, the Aficionado kit ($295) includes the Explorer and Enthusiast content, plus more exclusive, higher-end wines and hors d’oeuvres from Eat Well Celebrations and Feasts, a Newport-based caterer. Eat Well will also provide complimentary home delivery of the Aficionado kit for those who live within or very close to the I-275 loop. Explorer and Enthusiast kit purchasers can pick their kits up at Fueled Collective. Ohio state law prohibits the festival from shipping wine kits. Kits can be purchased up until March 14, and Aficionado kits will be delivered on March 17-18, based on zip code.
Weissmann stressed that the high-end wines in the more expensive kits are categorized as such based on quality, not rarity.
“We want people to be able to buy these wines locally,” she said. “We’re here to support our local wineries and stores like
Kroger.”
In the meantime, festival organizers will keep looking ahead to October. The in-person festival is still slated to take place at the Duke Convention Center, but Weissmann said they’ve already decided to move from the third-floor grand ballroom to the first-floor exhibit halls for social distancing purposes. They’re also prepared to delay the in-person festival further if necessary.
“If the (virtual event) goes well, we might do it again later in the year if the in-person fest doesn’t happen,” Weissmann said. “We’ll keep plugging away and adapt as we need to. So far, the Enthusiast kits are trending highest in sales. We’ll keep getting creative. If you had told me a year ago that we would be holding a virtual event and people would be actually buying tickets for it, I’d have thought you were crazy.”
Trevor Lawrence and Justin Fields entered college considered the top two players in the freshman class of 2018.
They were widely expected to be the top two coming out of college, too, after three years playing college football at Clemson and Georgia, respectively.
With the 2021 NFL Draft less than two months away, Lawrence is still widely assumed to be the player the Jacksonville Jaguars (with new head coach Urban Meyer) will choose with the No. 1 pick after leading the
Tigers to the College Football Playoff three times and winning it all once.
Considerably less consensus has formed around what happens next.
Despite leading Ohio State to the CFP twice and being named the Big Ten’s best quarterback and offensive player twice after transferring to Columbus in January 2019, Fields’ status as QB2 in the 2021 draft is no longer certain, at least as far as those doing the rankings in the media are concerned.
Among those who have moved BYU’s Zach Wilson ahead of Fields is NFL.com’s Daniel Jeremiah, a former NFL scout whose realworld experience in such a role gives him a leg up on most of the NFL Draft evaluators.
He also has North Dakota State quarterback Trey Lance ahead of Fields and offered some nuance to the discussion in a conference call with reporters this week.
After saying the choice between Fields and Lance is a toss-up, Jeremiah broke down the difference between Fields and Wilson as a matter of production vs. potential.
“I think both those guys are going to be really good players at the next level,” Jeremiah said of Fields and Wilson. “I would say I don’t think there’s a debate in terms of who played better last year when you just watch all the tape. To me Zach Wilson played the best, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a slam dunk he’s going to be the best player.”
In 12 games for the Cougars last season, Wilson completed 73.5 percent of his passes while Fields completed 70.2 percent of his passes in eight games for the Buckeyes.
Wilson also had the superior passer rating last season, though both finished in the national top 10.
While both operated passer-friendly offenses, Ohio State faced five of the top 25 defenses in the country as ranked by FootballOutsiders.com.
BYU, on the other hand, saw only one, and that is just one of the variables in evaluating Fields and Wilson.
While Wilson had the benefit of playing more games, Fields enjoyed the higher recruiting pedigree.
Though both are mobile, Fields is bigger and stouter (a listed 228 pounds vs. 210) and presents a greater threat as a runner.
“The evaluation is you’ve got Zach, who threw the ball better, somebody who made better decisions, but you look at what Justin brings to the table — first of all, let’s start with his toughness,” Jeremiah said. “We saw that in the Clemson game. That’s nothing to be diminished
there. He is extremely tough.”
Despite taking a helmet to the side early in Ohio State’s CFP semifinal matchup with Clemson, Fields threw for 385 yards and six touchdowns against a top 10 Tigers defense.
Considering the opponent and the stakes, that was in all likelihood Fields’ best college game.
It also happened to come right after his worst game, a 144-yard, no-touchdown, two-interception performance against Northwestern in the Big Ten Championship game.
After torching the Tigers, Fields turned in a so-so performance against Alabama (194 yards, one touchdown) in the National Championship Game, leaving plenty for evaluators to pick apart between early January and the draft in late April.
All three of those defenses show up among the best in the country according to Football Outsiders with Northwestern No. 1 in the site’s F+ rating followed by
Clemson (No. 6) and Alabama (No. 8).
(F+ combines ratings of efficiency and explosiveness measured via play-by-play data as well as drive data.)
Wilson threw for over 300 yards and three touchdowns against San Diego State, the No. 7 defense in the country and the best he faced, but was not at his best (240 yards, one touchdown, one interception) against Coastal Carolina, whose defense ranked No. 33 and was the next-best unit Wilson saw last season.
(The 6-4, 226-pound Lance, who like Wilson was a three-star recruit in the class of 2018, played only one game as the rest of the Bison’s season at the FCS level was postponed to spring.)
“You look at somebody that can make those throws, make every throw, somebody that is a dynamic runner, obviously that’s a big plus for (Fields) over Zach Wilson, but to me I think the reason why I end up going with Zach Wilson is really simple,” Jeremiah said. “It’s just I thought he was a better decision maker and I thought he threw the ball more accurately.
“But again, somebody is going to draft Justin Fields and they’re going to mix in some designed quarterback run game and they’re going to let him get on the move and make things happen and we’re going to continue to see him grow and develop, and I think he’s got a chance to be a really good pro as well.”
Fifteen minutes. That’s how close the Carroll girls basketball team was a year ago to beginning a weekend they believed would end with a state championship.
The Ohio High School Athletic Association pulled the teams off the Schottenstein Center court in Columbus during warmups. The players went to the locker room and waited for their coach. Cecilia Grosselin came in a few minutes later and broke news: There would be no state tournament because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Initially, I had no expression,” Carroll senior Ava Lickliter said. “I was like, ‘This can’t be real.’ And then like three minutes later, it hit, ‘Our season’s done.’ Not even off of a loss.”
That bad memory — and the tears the coach and the players shared while their fans filed out of the arena —
has driven the Carroll girls basketball team to today.
The Patriots (20-4) get another chance in the Division II state tournament. The play Napoleon (24-1) — another team that was supposed to play in the state final four last year — at 11 a.m. in the semifinals at UD Arena.
“For a lot of us, it is motivation because it was so unfortunate that it got ripped away from us,” Lickliter said. “To
be able to go back and to be able to prove to everyone that even though we graduated three seniors we’re still strong enough to make it back to where we are.”
Lickliter also was a starter on the Carroll team that lost in the state final in 2019. For her and fellow co-captain Megan Leraas and the other seniors, this is the last chance.
“I feel a lot of people didn’t expect this out of us, so to get to where we are now is a big statement to everyone that we’re just as strong,” Lickliter said.
Lickliter has always had a leadership role as a point guard, but she shared the role before this year with Allie Stefanek, who graduated last year. This year she’s the vocal leader.
“I’ve always felt like I’ve had a leadership role on the team, but now being a senior and labeled as a captain it’s really nice because the girls really listen to me,” Lickliter said.
Grosselin relies on Lickliter to keep the team organized and calm. She says her point guard’s focus and drive rub off on the rest of the team.
“She gets people in the right place and is so basketball smart,” Grosselin said. “A lot of times players don’t understand. Ava gets it.
“She leads by example as well. You see her in practice working hard on defense, being the first one down when we’re sprinting and doing drills. I just can’t say enough about her as a team captain and a senior leader.”
Lickliter has never been considered a star by those outside the team. In the state tournament media guide, teammates Sarah Ochs and Leraas are listed under the heading “Star Watch.” They deserve that rating. Lickliter, who averages 9.1 points, 3.7 rebounds and 4.1 assists, is listed under “Other Players to Watch.” Lickliter has signed to play NCAA Division II basketball at Wheeling, and Grosselin said the college recruiters say Lickliter is an elite defender.
“Ava does so much for our team,” Grosselin said. “She’s one of the reasons this is our third trip to the final four.”
The next step is to erase last year’s memory.
If there is crying in the locker room this time, it won’t because they didn’t get a chance.