Chatham County Georgia Savannah Food and Wine Festival
Between 2013 and 2019, Savannah gave over one November week to a festival built entirely around eating and drinking well. The Chatham County Georgia Savannah Food and Wine Festival spread ticketed dinners, tastings and classes across the historic district of Savannah, the county seat of Chatham County, anchored by a large open-air tasting on its Saturday. Chefs, winemakers and guests moved between squares, dining rooms and the riverfront.
That record is now closed. The final held edition took place in November 2019, the planned return the following year was abandoned with refunds, and a formal cancellation in May 2021 ended the story, with the organiser stating that no dates were being planned for 2022. This article therefore tells the history of a finished festival: what it was, how its weeks were assembled and how the run ended. Nothing in the record supports treating it as a living event, and no reader should plan around a future edition.
About the Festival
The event was presented by the Tourism Leadership Council of Savannah. Michael T. Owens, the council’s president and chief executive, was quoted in news coverage as the festival’s president. Direction was credited differently across the run: Jan Gourley was named festival director in layers from 2013, while an organiser-side layer from 2019 styled her Co-Founder and Festival Director.
Publishers never settled on one spelling of the name. The organiser and most news layers printed Savannah Food & Wine Festival, using an ampersand, while other news layers wrote the name out in full as Savannah Food and Wine Festival. Both forms describe the same week and are recorded separately here because the sources print them separately.
The festival was run as a nonprofit undertaking, benefiting local charitable organisations as well as its own Coastal Hospitality Education Foundation. The celebration therefore doubled as a fundraiser for hospitality education on the Georgia coast.
For a useful comparison, see the Charlton County Georgia Folkston Fall Festival for another county festival.
Quick Facts
| Item | Detail |
| Published name forms | Savannah Food & Wine Festival; Savannah Food and Wine Festival |
| Host city | Savannah, the county seat of Chatham County |
| Presented by | Tourism Leadership Council of Savannah |
| Festival president | Michael T. Owens, as quoted in news layers |
| First edition | November eleven to seventeen, 2013, called the inaugural edition |
| Last held edition | November four to ten, 2019 |
| Status | Ended; the 2021 edition was cancelled and no later edition is documented |
| Ticketing | Individually ticketed event by event, with no single festival admission |
| Saturday hub event | Taste of Savannah |
| First-edition attendance | An estimated seven thousand five hundred people, a news-magazine estimate |
History and Background
The weeklong festival debuted in the fall of 2013, its first edition running from November eleven to seventeen. News layers uniformly call that debut the inaugural edition. Rather than starting from empty ground, the organisers built the week outward from an existing anchor: Taste of Savannah, a tasting event with a long life of its own. A news layer from May 2013 billed that year’s Taste of Savannah as the thirteenth annual, showing the hub was well established before any festival surrounded it.
That longer lineage belongs to Taste of Savannah alone. One magazine layer remarked that the festival had started thirteen years earlier as a one-evening event. Read against the rest of the record, that remark describes the single-evening ancestor behind the hub tasting, not the weeklong festival, whose own documented start is 2013. The two beginnings are kept separate here, because merging them would hand the festival a founding date none of its sources claim for it.
The billings that followed are recorded as billings and nothing more. Coverage of the 2017 edition described a fifth anniversary, and an organiser-side layer in 2019 billed that year’s gathering as the seventh annual festival. The dated editions the record firmly holds are three: the inaugural week of November 2013, the edition of November six to twelve, 2017, and the edition of November four to ten, 2019, the last one ever held.
The ending arrived in stages. An edition was planned for 2020 and tickets were sold, yet it never took place. In May 2021 the festival issued its cancellation announcement, which recorded that full refunds had been issued to all 2020 ticket buyers. The same announcement cancelled the 2021 festival outright. That edition had been scheduled for November eight to fourteen, 2021, and the stated reason was that the City of Savannah was not issuing special-event permits for gatherings of over one hundred people. The announcement closed by saying that no dates were being planned for 2022, and no organiser, destination-marketing or local-news layer documents any edition after 2019.
What to Expect
In its held years, the shape of the week was a hub with spokes. The hub was Taste of Savannah, the large Saturday tasting that predated the festival and anchored its middle. Around it, organisers scheduled smaller, separately ticketed occasions across the historic district, so attendees assembled their own weeks rather than buying entry to a single fenced ground.
Serious wine drinkers were courted with a Grand Reserve wine tasting, while the River Street Wine Stroll turned the waterfront into a moving tasting route. A James Beard Foundation celebrity chef dinner and a chef tour brought nationally recognised cooking into the programme, and connoisseur wine dinners placed small groups at tables inside Savannah restaurants. Hands-on teaching ran alongside, through cooking classes and other learning experiences.
Daytime had its own fixtures: a Jazz & Bubbles brunch pairing live music with sparkling wine, and a riverboat luncheon cruise that moved the table onto the water. Q-Masters appeared among the week’s offerings, and a Secret Savannah Speakeasy surfaces in layers from around 2018, an era-specific entry rather than a fixture of the whole run.
Venues shifted between editions. Taste of Savannah stood in Ellis Square during the 2013 debut, but by the 2017 edition, and in layers from around 2018, the hub had moved to the Georgia State Railroad Museum. Other events used River Street and the Mansion on Forsyth Park, and the farm-to-table dinner of 2013 was held at Bethesda Academy.
Planning Your Visit
Because the festival no longer takes place, this section describes how a visit worked during its documented years, and what a traveller to Savannah finds in its place today.
In its running years, the first decision was which individual events to buy, because no pass admitted a visitor to the festival as a whole. Each dinner, tasting and class carried its own ticket, so a week was planned the way a menu is chosen, item by item. In 2019 the organiser also sold multi-event Patron packages, in Premier Patron, Patron and weekend forms, for guests who wanted several occasions bundled together. The prices of those packages were not captured in the material gathered, so they cannot be quoted here.
Geography shaped the rest of the planning. Events were scattered through the historic district rather than concentrated on one site, so a visitor’s base mattered less than a willingness to walk between squares and the riverfront. A listing layer prints an address of 700 Drayton Street for the festival, and that form belongs to the Mansion on Forsyth Park, one venue among several, rather than to any festival office or gate.
A traveller arriving in Savannah today will find the stages but not the show. Ellis Square, River Street, the railroad museum grounds and the Mansion on Forsyth Park remain part of the city’s historic core and can be visited in their own right, yet none hosts this festival, and no edition is on sale or scheduled.
A Sample Day From the Final Years
No hour-by-hour timetable survives in the gathered layers, so the day below is assembled from the documented programme of the festival’s later editions rather than copied from a schedule.
Begin with brunch. The Jazz & Bubbles brunch gave the morning a gentle start, pairing music with sparkling wine before the day’s main tasting. From there, the afternoon belonged to the hub. Taste of Savannah occupied the Saturday centre of the week, first at Ellis Square and later at the Georgia State Railroad Museum, the one occasion nearly every attendee shared. Between brunch and the hub, the keen could fit in a cooking class, since teaching sessions were woven through the programme. Evening returned the visitor to a single chosen table: a connoisseur wine dinner inside a Savannah restaurant, or one of the week’s chef-led occasions, each closed by a ticket bought for that event alone.
How the Festival Compared
Most food festivals sell a gate ticket and concentrate their programme inside it. Savannah’s week did nearly the opposite, dissolving its programme into the city itself. There was no single ground to enter and no wristband covering the week, only a calendar of separately priced occasions and a historic district to walk between them. The festival felt less like an attraction visited and more like a temporary layer laid over the city’s dining life.
Set against its own first edition, the later festival was a changed production. In 2013 the hub tasting stood in Ellis Square, and a farm-to-table dinner at Bethesda Academy carried a one hundred fifty dollar ticket. By 2017 the hub had shifted to the Georgia State Railroad Museum, and by 2019 the organiser was selling bundled Patron packages beside the individual tickets. The concept stayed constant while its centre of gravity moved.
Set against Taste of Savannah standing alone, the festival week multiplied a single tasting into a calendar. The hub had already reached its thirteenth annual billing by May 2013 with no festival around it. What the festival added was duration and range: a week of dinners, strolls, cruises, classes and tastings orbiting one established Saturday.
A Checklist for the Curious Traveller
- Accept that no edition is scheduled, and treat any page advertising a current edition with suspicion.
- Walk Ellis Square, where the hub tasting stood during the inaugural year of 2013.
- Visit the Georgia State Railroad Museum, the hub venue documented for 2017 and the layers around 2018.
- Stroll River Street, the waterfront route the festival turned into a wine stroll.
- Pass the Mansion on Forsyth Park at 700 Drayton Street, the address one listing layer printed for the festival.
- Remember that the one hundred fifty dollar figure from 2013 bought a single farm-to-table dinner, never a pass to the whole week.
Beyond the Festival
The settings outlasted the event. The squares, the riverfront, the railroad museum and the great houses of the historic district were Savannah landmarks before 2013 and remain so now, so a visitor can still trace the festival’s geography on foot even though its calendar is empty.
The festival also left a purpose behind it. Because it was run as a nonprofit, its weeks were meant to benefit local charitable organisations and the Coastal Hospitality Education Foundation, tying the city’s pleasure in food to training for the people who cook and serve it. Bethesda Academy keeps its own separate place in the story as the setting of the first year’s farm-to-table dinner.
Why the Festival Mattered
For a city of Savannah’s size, sustaining a weeklong culinary festival across most of a decade was a considerable achievement. The inaugural edition drew an estimated seven thousand five hundred people, half of them from out of town, according to a news-magazine estimate, suggesting the week quickly became a reason to travel rather than merely an amenity for residents.
Its ending carries a lesson. The festival survived neither the loss of its 2020 edition nor a permitting climate that barred gatherings of over one hundred people, and its organisers chose refunds and a clean cancellation over a pretence of return. The record it leaves is unusually honest: a celebrated beginning, a documented middle and a plainly stated end.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Savannah Food and Wine Festival still held?
No. The last edition held ran from November four to ten, 2019. The edition planned for 2020 was abandoned and its ticket buyers received full refunds, the 2021 edition was formally cancelled in May of that year, and the same announcement said no dates were being planned for 2022. No later edition appears in any organiser, destination-marketing or local-news layer.
What was the Taste of Savannah?
It was the festival’s Saturday hub event, and it was older than the festival itself. A May 2013 news layer billed that year’s Taste of Savannah as the thirteenth annual, and the week was built by expanding around it. The hub stood in Ellis Square in 2013 and had moved to the Georgia State Railroad Museum by 2017.
Did one ticket cover the whole festival week?
No single ticket ever covered the week. Every dinner, tasting, stroll and class was ticketed on its own, so the one hundred fifty dollar price attached to the farm-to-table dinner of 2013 bought that dinner and nothing else. In 2019 the organiser sold multi-event Patron packages in Premier Patron, Patron and weekend forms, but the prices of those packages were not captured in the material gathered.
How many people came to the first festival?
A news-magazine estimate put the 2013 edition at seven thousand five hundred people, half of them from out of town. That figure is an estimate for the inaugural year only, and no counted attendance figure is published for any edition of the festival.
What to Expect From the Next Chatham County Georgia Savannah Food and Wine Festival
How often is Chatham County Georgia Savannah Food and Wine Festival held?
It is not held at present, and no future edition is planned in the record. During its documented life it appeared as a weeklong November festival, with dated editions in 2013, 2017 and 2019. Its run ended with the cancellations of the 2020 and 2021 editions.
When is the next Chatham County Georgia Savannah Food and Wine Festival?
There is no next edition. The May 2021 announcement said no 2022 dates were being planned, and nothing in the organiser, destination-marketing or local-news record documents an edition after 2019. Stray pages occasionally gesture at later dates, including an aggregator listing that prints November 2026 dates and templated pages advertising a 2025 edition, but those conflict with the documented cancellation record and are not evidence that any later edition was held or will be held.
Will the dates change?
There are no dates that could change. The festival’s last scheduled dates, in November 2021, were cancelled before they arrived, and no organiser announcement of any future edition exists in the record for the question to attach to.
A Closed Chapter
The Savannah Food and Wine Festival had a beginning its sources state plainly, a middle they document in dinners and tastings, and an end they record with equal clarity. It belongs to Savannah’s past now: a finished, well-documented week of eating and drinking that the city hosted from 2013 to 2019 and then, openly, let go.
