Disney California Adventure's Food & Wine Festival - Kurt Russell Q&A!

This past weekend, we attended the Food & Wine Festival at California Adventure. This is the first time in several years that they've held this festival, due to all the construction that took place. This festival celebrates all things food and wine. They have a festival marketplace set up near Cars Land, where you can purchase bites of all kinds of culinary delights, as well as glasses of wine! The festival also offers beverage seminars, where you can learn about wine, beer, and spirits from experts, and celebrity kitchen seminars, where you can learn about food from top chefs!

This was actually our second visit to this festival this year, but the first time was not nearly as exciting as this time. Our first visit, we went to a special tasting hosted by the Silverado Winery, which is owned by Ron Miller and Diane Disney (Walt's daughter). The head winemaker gave a short talk about the winery and how they operate, and we had 3 tastings of wine while sitting outside at the beautiful Sonoma Terrace.

The Blue Sky Cellar is also a special AP-only area, much like during the recent AP days, where annual passholders can get a special pin, sit for a while, and charge your phone. They also had a cool display showing the design process for a recent Mickey balloon-shaped popcorn bucket.

During the trip this weekend, we went to a special celebrity kitchen with none other than Kurt Russell! Kurt is an apprentice winemaker and has his own winery, GoGi Wines.

The event, held in Stag 17, had several rows of chairs and tables set up, with forks, napkins, and water glasses already in place, along with a notepad and Disneyland Hotel pen.

A bearded Kurt Russell spoke for about an hour and a half about how he first became interested in wine while on vacation in France, about opening up his winery, and even got super technical, talking about what kind of dirt the grapes are grown in, the all the different clones of merlot. 

We first got 2 tastings of his Chardonnay, called Goldie, and a viognier that he only makes for his mother! He had to ask her to spare a few cases for this event, which is why it wasn't as full a glass as the other tastings were. Both were delicious!

We also got a full plate of food, to taste along with the wine and see how different flavors were brought out by each. There were several kinds of cheese, nuts, raisins, dried pineapple, strawberries, and cheese on a piece of toast.

The 90 minutes flew by, and before we knew it, it was time for some Q&A. People asked him questions about his early career, when he was a kid working for Disney. He talked about Walt Disney congratulating him on his baseball championship win, and about playing catch with Elvis. What a life he's had!!

We also got a nice tasting of his red wine as well, plus a chocolate dessert!!

At the end, everyone got to have their picture taken with him and chat for a quick second. During our turn, my boyfriend mentioned that we'd recently bought a bottle of Tiger for a friends' dinner party, and Kurt laughed and said he loved drinking that wine!

And now for a bonus duck story!! While having a glass of wine prior to the Kurt Russell event at Sonoma Terrace, we saw 4 little baby ducklings quacking along. Everyone in the vicinity, self included, immediately started 'awwww'-ing. But where was their mother??

The ducks wandered off into some bushes, and then the momma duck came down a nearby flight of stairs with two yellow baby ducks in tow, quacking what I can only assume meant "where are you damn kids?" in duck-language. She walked around and people tried to shepherd her over to where the baby ducks had been.

I lost track of them until we were heading out, and saw this happy sight of the momma duck reunited with her lost ducklings. It's like a Disney movie!!

Bonus Fun Wheel at night picture! Ooooh.