Taste of Kutztown celebrates 10th year
The 10th anniversary of the Taste of Kutztown event in June was a big success for the Kutztown Rotary Club and the community of Kutztown.
The event is Kutztown Rotary Club’s biggest fundraiser event each year, allowing the Club to provide direct assistance to community efforts including community fire companies and libraries, local food banks, and various youth projects. In addition, some of the funds help people around the world through the Club’s global initiatives including the eradication of polio and Shelter Box Disaster Relief Program.
The Kutztown Rotary Club celebrated the notable anniversary with a New Orleans theme including music from the Voodoo BBQ Brass Band who provided roving jazz music, and a VIP Carnival of Mardi Gras wine tasting and food paring event hosted by the certified wine and spirits specialist, Marc Supsic.
Praise for the event flowed from participants almost as readily as the wine and beer flowed from the vendors. Along with being a 10-year milestone, this year’s event was noted for expansion into the lower section of the Kutztown Park with a new layout for the nearly 100 wine, beer, food, and craft vendors. The event has been held in the Park since it outgrew the Kutztown Main Street location, where it was last held in 2014.
Another welcome expansion this year was in the types of tasting vendors. In addition to an increased number of wineries and breweries, this year’s event included 2 distilleries as well as makers of mead and hard apple cider.
The event also marked the second year for the 5K Run for the Wine event, which starts and finishes in the Park and runs through portions of Kutztown Borough as an official 5K course. New for this year’s race was motion timing using chip technology to determine the winners. The event has proved to be very popular and doubled in participation from last year to include 80 runners.
Prizes were awarded for individual age categories as well as to male and female overall winners Matt Gillette (15:14.63) and Katlyn Spangler (19:14.33) and male and female masters winners Jeff Fussner (20:51.28) and Raine Fussner (20:47.78). Following the race, runners were able to take advantage of discounted tickets for the tasting event.
The Kutztown Rotary Club would like to thank the community for making this event successful and would especially like to thank the individuals who volunteered to help during the event. If you would like to be on the volunteer list for next year and receive a free ticket to enjoy the 2020 tasting event, please email volunteers@tasteof kutztown.com.