Wine lovers in Wellington are working to bring Budburst a natural wine and food festival to the capital.

Being a wine lover in the craft beer capital can be tough. Every restaurant drinks list and corner bar has an extensive range of exciting beers – always something new. Late last year a group of wine educators, retailers, distributors and winemakers got together, many fresh from Rootstock Sydney and all abuzz about the wines and producers they had just met. Over yum cha at Majestic Cuisine we realised that many of us had been making plans to initiate a wine festival separately and decided to pool our efforts. The result of us all coming together: Budburst – a Natural Wine and food festival.

Budburst is a full day festival that will be held in November this year at Prefab Eatery on Jessie Street in central Wellington. While many wine events are for the wine professional, Budburst is for the wine drinker: free of pretension and full of fun. The main driver behind the event is to expose wine lovers to something new: a style, region, producer. The event isn’t about labelling some wines as good and others as bad, but rather to encourage a dialogue about how the wine is made while enjoying some live music, local food and gorgeous wines.

Why crowd fund?

Team Budburst is made up of wine professionals from all walks of life who are united by a desire to share wine and food with everyone we meet. We are also a team of volunteers who are working to pull this event together alongside busy, involved lives. There is no industry body or corporate sponsor backing us. But we need to put down a deposit to secure the venue so that we can get on with the work of organising the event.

To help make this event a reality we are coming directly to you, the people who make, sell and distribute wine to ask for support. By getting behind this event you can help change the way consumers taste and talk about wine.

Pledge what you can, and share with your community. Rewards are available for those in Wellington and across the country. Branded wine glasses, a glass of wine on us, winemaker’s assistant for the day, stickers and posters are just some of the swag that can be collected for those outside of the capital.

Who is Team Budburst?

Some of the names and faces behind Team Budburst include our Event captain, Amy Farnsworth of Regional Wines & Spirits, our Organisational whizz, Elissa Jordan of Winefulness, and the Industry paradigm shifter that is Stephen Wong MW of Wine Sentience.

Our supporting cast and event cheerleaders include: Brandon Nash of Dhall & Nash, Jules van Cruysen of Hillside Kitchen & Cellar, Alex Craighead of Don Wines, Lance Redgwell of Cambridge Road Vineyard, Dan Gillett of Wine Diamonds, Johannes Bay of Wine Sentience, Richard Klein of Artigiano Imports and JP Henderson of Salty Pidgin Bar & Bistro.

Watch the video below to find out more…

What happens next?

New Zealand abounds with amazing producers and thrilling wines. As a small team of volunteers we had to step back and look at the realities of what’s possible. Once our crowdfunding campaign successfully completes we will be faced with the difficult job of preparing producers’ invitations to this first event. If we could squeeze everyone into the venue, we absolutely would. Sadly, we’re constrained by venue size and so we won’t be able to have everyone along. When year one is a roaring success we can look for a bigger venue and for those who can’t make it to Wellington this time, your support will help move us along the road towards having the event in more cities and larger locations in future.

We can’t do it without you – and you want it to happen because it’s going to be awesome.

The Budburst PledgeMe campaign runs until Thursday 23 June at 1PM with an aim to raise $6,000. Crowdfunding is an all or nothing exercise. If we don’t hit our target we walk away with nothing. We’re hoping the wider wine community will rally and help us get there.

For any questions on our campaign or the event, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Team Budburst on budburstnz@gmail.com.

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