The City of Milpitas Art and Wine Festival

Not all of the activities that our Council gets involved in are strictly Knight's functions or Church functions. Being a community service organization, our Council gets involved in civic activities. The annual Milpitas Art and Wine Festival is no exception. At this festival, our Council is given the reponsibility of manning one of the wine booths that dot the festival at various locations.

The wine booth consists of 2 pairs of husband and wife teams who work in 3 hour shifts to serve the wines from local, regional, and international wineries. It's a really fun time where you have the opportunity to promote the order (our banner hangs out in front for all to see) and meet people.

This year, the booth that St. Elizabeth's Council was assigned was pouring wines from two wineries located in Gilroy. These wineries were The Hecker Pass Winery and The Solis Winery. We had a total of 6 wines ranging from whites to a vine rose to a full bodied merlot.

In this picture, Skip Yenchik and Greg Dessel gets bottles of wine prepared to serve so that there will be no delays with having to wait while wine bottles are opened.

This year, there were very strict rules that forbade drinking of wine inside the booth by the volunteers as well as restrictions as to the amount of wine that could be served to the festival attendees. In the picture to your right, Greg Dessel pours a selection for one of the festival attendees. In addition to these rules, all attendees who were over the age of 21 had to show a photo ID at the ticket booths in order to receive both a wrist band and a hand stamp verifying they were of legal age to consume.

There were no cash transactions at the wine and beer booths. Instead attendees were given either wooden tokens or tickets in order to be served a wine or beer selection.

The Sunday morning crew, who had been on duty from 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM, shown from left to right: Connie Yenchik, Skip Yenchik, Gene Dessel, and Greg Dessel pose for a picture as their tour of duty is about to come to an end. The Yenchiks and Dessels are veterans having volunteered at previous year's Art and Wine Festivals.

The incoming crew taking the 12:00 - 3:00 PM shift, shown from left to right are: Ed Blake, Lenore Blake, Mike Misa, and Mirta Misa. For Ed and Lenore, this was their second Art and Wine Festival and Mike and MIrta's first. All-in-all, a fun time was had by all.