Overview The Denver Food + Wine Festival is the Colorado Restaurant Association's late-summer food and drink week on the Tivoli Quad at the Auraria Campus, billed as Colorado's biggest restaurant-industry fundraiser, and its proceeds go to the people who work in the state's kitchens through the Colorado Restaurant Foundation. The week opens with a Riedel wine-glass seminar, moves to the Shake + Brake Showdown and a Dine Out Auction, and ends on Saturday at the Grand Tasting, where more than 40 Colorado restaurants cook and Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits pours more than 700 drinks, with Master Sommeliers choosing the specialty wines. The Foundation runs Colorado ProStart for high school culinary students, scholarships, and the Angel Relief Fund for hospitality workers in a crisis. On site The Grand Tasting runs noon to 4 p.m., 21 and over. VIP guests get in at noon to a lounge with about ten upscale restaurants, reserve wines and seminars; First Taste gets an hour on the full floor before general admission opens at 1. Colorado Top Chef alumni cook there, including Manny Barella of Chicken Riot and Darren Chang and Travis Masar of Pig and Tiger, and ProStart high school students help plate and serve. The Shake + Brake Showdown is an all-you-can-drink cocktail competition fed by Denver food trucks, where the crowd votes for the best truck and the best cocktail. At the Riedel seminar, sommelier Shelley Sale shows how a glass's shape changes the wine, and everyone takes a set home. Audience The crowd is local: 84% of attendees at a recent festival lived in the Denver metro area. The festival pitches the Grand Tasting as a place where producers, consumers and industry leaders meet, and it hands every sponsor the participating restaurants' contact list. Track record At a recent edition the three main events drew 80 people to the Riedel seminar, 700 to the Shake + Brake Showdown and 2,500 to the Grand Tasting. The festival says the Grand Tasting sells out every year, and the most recent Riedel seminar sold out ahead of the date. Attendees gave a recent festival a Net Promoter Score of 80. Brand presence Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits has served as title sponsor. The core packages borrow the kitchen brigade - Executive Chef, Chef de Cuisine, Sous Chef and Chef de Partie - and scale from logos in email and on signage up to a 10-by-10 pad site at the Grand Tasting with a table. The single-sponsor pieces are more hands-on: a logo etched on every keepsake glass, the hydration station, VIP welcome bites made to a chef's recipe and served by ProStart students, gift bags for 700 attendees and 60 restaurants, and five spots where a product goes into a Top Chef alum's signature bite.