Press Releases

Taste of Vail, Smithsonian ink marketing partnership

CREATED: 2007-02-05 10:54 AM

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Taste of Vail, Smithsonian
ink marketing partnership

Publishing giant takes charitable
festival to a broader audience

VAIL, Colo. (Feb. 3, 2007) - America's premier wine and culinary festival is joining forces with a cultural and media icon.

Organizers of Taste of Vail, celebrating its 17th year April 11-14, announce a new partnership with Smithsonian magazine, which delivers top-quality editorial focusing on history, science, travel and the arts to a highly affluent audience of more than two million people.

"It's a good fit. Smithsonian is about the substance and soul of a location, and the food and wine aspect is as significant as anything else," says TJ Armstrong, a founding member of Taste of Vail's board of directors. "Readers of Smithsonian magazine are adventuresome and inquisitive people with enough discretionary income to indulge all that. This is a great opportunity to show them what we've got here in the Vail Valley."

Smithsonian magazine is a monthly magazine reaching 6.9 million cultural enthusiasts with diverse interests in the arts, history, sciences and popular culture of the times. Each subscription includes a complimentary membership to the Smithsonian Institution, the world's largest museum complex and research organization composed of 17 museums and the National Zoo in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, and two museums in New York City.

Taste of Vail, meanwhile, celebrates the rich lifestyle, fine dining, prestigious art galleries, fashionable shops and phenomenal skiing that have made the Vail Valley a world-class, year-round resort. The festival was created in 1990 by a group of local restaurateurs as a marketing event to showcase the resort's world-class restaurants. Now the internationally famous destination boasts more than 21 Wine Spectator award-winning restaurants, the most of any resort community in the United States. Many of them are among the nearly three-dozen Vail Valley restaurants that participate in Taste of Vail every year.

Such high standards over the years have led to the Taste of Vail's being ranked as one of the top three arts-and-entertainment events in the United States, in terms of quality, by the 2006 Luxury Brand Status Index events, conducted by the New York-based Luxury Institute (www.luxuryinstitute.com).

Taste of Vail also is a charitable nonprofit organization. Since its inception, the festival has contributed more than $330,000 to Vail Valley charities; and in 2005, in conjunction with Ritz-Carlton, the Taste of Vail donated $23,000 to the Hurricane Katrina relief fund.

"Partnering with Smithsonian magazine potentially means not only a significant increase in cash to improve Taste of Vail as an event, but to boost the bottom line," says Armstrong. "This is a fantastic opportunity to utilize national exposure to benefit Vail Valley charities."

"This partnership will elevate Taste of Vail to an even more unique and memorable experience, reaching a broader audience," says Rosie Walker, Smithsonian Publishing's director of marketing. "As North America's No. 1 ski resort, Vail is frequented by CEOs and movers and shakers in business and industry - affluent, influential culture-seekers who partake in cultural events worldwide ... just like the Smithsonian reader."

The 17th annual Taste of Vail will feature perhaps the finest and most diverse selection of participating wineries to date, tapping a preliminary list of 54 wine producers from around the world to pour the best they have to offer. Wineries from France, Spain, New Zealand, Australia and Italy join a large contingent from Oregon and, of course, the Napa Valley, Sonoma County and the central coast of California.

For more information, or to buy tickets, visit www.tasteofvail.com, e-mail info@tasteofvail.com or call 970-926-5665.

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Media contact:
Stephen Lloyd Wood, media liaison
(970) 949-9774
press@tasteofvail.com
www.tasteofvail.com