About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 1, 2018)
Nick Bowman Features Editor | 770-718-3426 | getout@gainesvilletimes.com W&t Sttncs gainesvilletimes.com Thursday, November 1,2018 Three mays to etyoy mine this month the end of the harvest season with a festival. Brianna Thornton, manager at Montaluce, is hoping the winery’s fourth-annual Festival in the Vines is the best yet. “I think a big part of it is just extra planning going into this year,” Thornton said. “We have two people working on it, so we have two sets of eyes looking on everything ... I think it’s just more manpower.” Thornton and Montaluce’s ban quet captain, Nicole Dowis, have doubled the number of vendors coming to this year’s event from noon to 5 p.m. on Nov. 4. Thornton said there will be about 30 craft and boutique vendors. Along with vendors, the restau rant will be open and serving chili and caramel apples. “This year, we’re hoping for a really good turnout with about 500 people,” Thornton said. “We’ve already sold 300 tickets online, and we’ll sell tickets at the door as well.” Bringing the music for the day will be Radford Windham and Step Back Cadillac, a band out of Dahlonega that has been on stage with the likes of Zac Brown. Admission to the event is $10 and wine and food costs extra, but SCOTT ROGERS I The Times BY LAYNE SALIBA lsaliba@gainesvilletimes.com Like a ripe piece of cheese or a tasty hunk of steak, November pairs well with wine — and there are plenty of events this month to get you out to enjoy both. live music from The League of Decency, too. Truax said Vineyard Fest is different than other wine events. Once guests purchase their ticket, everything’s included. But you’ll have to take some extra steps to get into this festival, as individual tickets sold out in August. To get in, you’ll have to book an overnight package, which include a room at the resort and two tickets to the event. For those who can score a ticket, they’ll get to enjoy all the wine, spirits and beer they can handle. The event will also feature a bread and cheese station, a pie bar with pecan pie, Mississippi mud pie, cream puffs and peanut butter cookies and a whole-smoked pig station by the fountain outside. And once you’ve gotten your fill, it wouldn’t be a trip to a winery without grape stomping. “It’s one of the most popular sta tions,” Truax said. “They’ll go out, stomp wine for their Instagram and they really have a good time. That’s something people really enjoy.” Montaluce’s Festival in the Vines Dahlonega’s Montaluce Winery and Restaurant is also ringing in Chateau Elan’s Vineyard Fest Chateau Elan Winery & Resort pitches its event as “one of the first big wine festivals in Georgia and in the Southeast.” The 22nd-annual event will feature more than 100 wine, beer and spirit vendors, mostly from Georgia. New this year, though, it will feature a few wines from other regions. “It’s evolved and morphed a lit tle bit over the years, but the heart and soul of the event has stayed the same,” said Emily Truax, market ing manager at Chateau Elan. “In the past few years, we’ve even expanded on that and also included local distilleries and breweries.” Sweetwater Brewing, Six & Twenty Distillery, 6 Degree Tequila, Boutier Winery, Haber sham Winery, Five Points Berries Winery and Dark Horse Winery will all be there from 1 to 5 p.m. on Nov. 11 along with food sta tions from the resort’s chef and there will be some free activities at the festival, including a hay ride. Dahlonega Walking Tours’ Grapes and Ghosts Wine Tour If a wine festival packed with other people isn’t quite scary enough, Dahlonega Walking Tours has just what you need. With the Grapes and Ghosts Wine Tour, guests get to walk around down town Dahlonega hearing stories of haunting while sipping on wine. “Basically we tell the ghost sto ries that are associated with the town and the individual buildings that we’re going to,” said Jeremy Sharp, co-owner of Dahlonega Walking Tours. “Most of the stops that we go to are located in historic buildings that are 150 years old, so over the years they’ve collected a multitude of stories.” With stops at the Dahlonega Tasting Room, Naturally Georgia, Conner House and Canvas and Cork, guests will have a chance to sample wines while mingling with each other and listening to ghost stories. “We try to allocate a little bit of time for people to socialize,” Sharp said. “And it’s really cool because the wine room tasting owners, they actually tell their own stories, things that have happened to them in the past.” Tours are for ages 21 and up and are given at 5 p.m. on Fridays and 5:30 p.m. on Saturdays. Tickets are $20 apiece and include two wine tastings. If you’re wanting more, there is an additional charge. Tick ets are $15 for designated drivers The tour is just more than a half- mile long and takes about three hours, but Sharp said they always try to make it a conversational tour, encouraging guests to share their own experiences. “People love ghosts and people love wine,” Sharp said. “And we’ve got plenty of that in Dahlonega, so it was just a natural fit to combine the two.” Festival in the Vines When: Noon to 5 p.m. Nov. 4 Where: Montaluce Winery and Restaurant, 946 Via Montaluce, Dahlonega Cost: $10 Grapes and Ghosts Wine Tour When: 5 p.m. Fridays, 5:30 p.m. Saturdays Where: 19 East Main Street, Suite F, Dahlonega Cost: $20, designated drivers $15 Vineyard Fest When: 1 to 5 p.m. Nov. 11 Where: Chateau Elan Winery & Resort, 100 Rue Charlemagne Drive, Braselton Good books galore: Hall library having fall sale BY AMBER TYNER atyner@gainesvilletimes.com Books of almost every genre will be avail able for purchase this weekend at a book sale in the Hall County Library System’s Gainesville branch. “We have a little bit — or in some cases a lot — of everything,” Lisa MacKinney, Hall County Library Director, said about the book selection. The two-day event is hosted by Friends of the Hall County Library, a nonprofit orga nization whose mission is to fundraise and advocate for the library system. “We will have children’s books, we will have Spanish books, we will have large- print books,” she said. “This year, we have a really, really good fiction selection. We had one very large donation of very high qual ity, like-new almost, fiction.” She said prices of the books will mostly range between 50 cents to $1, and on Sun day there will be a “fire sale” with items sold $5 per bag. “You fill that bag just as high as you can fill it,” she said. “I have been astonished at what some people can get into one bag. It is truly amazing.” MacKinney said while they have a book sale every year, this will actually be the second one for 2018. “We had one in May, but we’re having a bonus book sale this fall because we’re try ing to get rid of anything we can move out for the renovation,” she said, referring to the construction set for early next year. She said the book sale is one of the sys tem’s most important fundraisers, as pro ceeds help pay for library activities. “It raises more money than anything else, and it pays for a huge chunk of NICK BOWMAN I The Times Rows of fiction books for sale pile up in the meeting room earlier this year at the Gainesville branch of the Flail County Library System. Hall County Library Book Sale When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 3 and 1 -4 p.m. Nov. 4 Where: Hall County Library System, Gainesville Branch, 127 Main St. NW, Gainesville More info: www.hallcountylibrary.org our Summer Reading Program every year,” she said. “This is really our biggest fundraiser.” And it’s also pretty popular. “We’ll probably see 1,000 people,” MacK inney said. “Usually when we open, the line is wrapped around the library building.” Tracking down electric vehicle charging stations just got easier: Google Maps has made public charging stations searchable through its mobile app. SCOn ROGERS The Times Getting out is a little easier for owners of electric cars Google Maps adds charging points to mobile app BY NICK BOWMAN nbowman@ gainesvilletimes.com Taking the ol’ electric car out for a spin is about to get a lot less nerve wracking: Google has added charging point locations to its mobile app. By searching for generic terms, including simply plugging in “ev charg ing near me” or a similar phrase, Google’s Apple and Android apps will turn up any public charging points in the immediate area. In Hall County, four charging stations are marked. Near downtown Gaines ville, a point is listed at the Hampton Inn on Jesse Jew ell Parkway. Hampton Inn confirmed they have two pay-per-use charging sta tions at the hotel. Off of Browns Bridge Road, a point is marked at Century Equipment, a weld ing and battery charger manufacturer, on Murphy Boulevard. Century could not be reached on Wednes day to confirm that it had a charger. At the University of North Georgia’s Gainesville cam pus, SemaConnect main tains a charging station. Finally, there’s a charg ing point listed at the Atlanta Falcons training camp in Flowery Branch on Falcons Parkway. “To help you make a quick decision about which station to use, we’ll show you infor mation about the business where the station is located, the types of ports available, charging speeds, and how many ports there are,” wrote Andrew Foster, manager of Google Maps, in a blog post for the company. “You’ll also see information about the station from drivers, includ ing photos, ratings, reviews and questions.” In the United States, the chargers included in Google Maps include Tesla, Charge- point, SemaConnect, EVgo and Blink.
