Hey Napa, How About Some Ribs?

The streets were filled with beer loving, BBQ eating, blues happy people in downtown Napa on Saturday.  It was the 3rd annual Blues, Brews & BBQ festival.  Main Street was closed off to all traffic as locals and visitors alike danced to 7 local Bay Area blues bands.  Rumor has it there were 20 micro brewed beers in the Beer Garden. There were many vendors serving different styles of barbecue, but I was in Bounty Hunter rib heaven all day, so I didn’t see much else except the blue haze from the multiple grills cooking hundreds of pounds of food.

We had a booth set up next to the main stage - thank you Downtown Association for the awesome placement.  We rolled our smoker right to the edge of the booth and served piping hot, perfectly spiced ribs from about 1pm until 4:45pm, when we sold out for the first time in the 3 year history of the event. Thanks to all of you who stopped by and had (at least) a half rack.

The highlight of the day was the Rib Eatin’ Contest, which we set up a little differently this year. Instead of local winemakers competing for the glory, we held two raffles allowing locals to compete for the coveted Golden Smoker award.  We selected 6 contestants from our raffle in the Wine Bar and 6 contestants from a raffle on The Vine, KVYN, one of our local radio stations.  Last year’s winner Matthew Peck also competed in the contest.  He gave it his best shot, but there’s a new champion who can bask in Rib Eatin’ Glory….Darren Turbeville, owner of Toy-B-Ville specialty toy store, who smoked the competition at 27 ribs!!!  Throughout the contest, he had a few hardy challengers, but towards the end of the 10 minutes he pulled ahead.

Thank you to all the contestants for coming downtown and making it a fantastic event.  And a big congratulations to Darren!  We look forward to watching you defend your title next year.

Next up for the BH crowd is to take this show on the road!  We’re packing our corkscrews and heading to Laguna Beach next month for an evening filled with exceptional wines and hors d’oeuvres with a good-time guarantee.  If you’re down that way, look us up!

--Summer Olson, Event & PR Manager