Record crowd attends Sip of Slope

The Sip of the Slope wine festival held Saturday evening near Royal City brought out the largest crowd in the history of the festival. The folks dined on prime rib or garlic herb chicken breast and tried wines from several area wine-makers, as well as one local beer, one local hard cider and several locally made cheeses.

by Ted Escobar & Royal Register Editor
| September 30, 2015 6:05 AM

ROYAL CITY — The fourth Sip of the Slope Wine Festival, held Saturday at the Seed Cupboard Nursery, attracted a record crowd of 156 people. The previous high mark was 105 at the golf course last year.

“It was packed; It was really crowded,” said Seed Cupboard owner and festival organizer Lisa Villegas. “The weather was ideal. People hung around late. We finally got everybody out by 9:30”

Sip of the Slope usually goes from 5-8 p.m.

Tera Redwine of Wenatchee, who represented Hagadone Corp. (parent company of The Royal Register), said: “It was a lot of fun.”

“A lot of people raved about the prime rib.” Villegas said. “Danielle Smith deserves all the credit.”

The visitors enjoyed either a prime rib dinner or a garlic herb chicken breast dinner. They got to taste the offerings of eight wineries, a locally made beer, a locally made hard cider and cheeses made in Richland.

They were entertained by a harpist from Moses Lake and a pair of roving acoustical guitarists that have become a fixture at Royal City events.

“The harpist (Rena Schlener) was wonderful, and Slag Callahan and Gavin Rose were great once again,” Villegas said. “Seth Davis, our auctioneer, made the evening a lot of fun.”

So much fun that people really dug into their pockets. Four Seattle Seahawks tickets went for $1,300. Two tickets to the Watershed Concert at The Gorge sold for $850.

Villegas didn’t know Sunday what the total take was between the ticket sales, the live and silent auctions and several raffles. It was a lot.

“It’s amazing how our community comes out for things like this,” Villegas said. “It’s going to make a big dent in our beautification projects.”

The Sip of the Slope is a project of The SHOC (Strengthening the Heart of the Community) organization. It often spearheads beautification projects around he community.

The next project will be the installation of benches and trees along Ahlers Road from the schools administration office to the bottom of the hill.

The only glitch in Saturday’s proceedings, was a slower-than-expected serving of the dinner. Of the more than 10 volunteer servers Villegas lined up, only five showed. But the guests didn’t seem to mind as they enjoyed the evening.

“I’ve got to do something special for the servers,” Villegas said. “They were crazy busy. And they kept telling us about how people were raving about the beautiful evening.”

Neither Villegas nor the Seed Cupboard Nursery earned a dime from the Sip of the Slope. But Villegas said many of the attendees saw her place for the first time.

“That’s good for us,” she said.

The Sip of the Slope to Seed Cupboard and handed the reins to Villegas because it had run out of crowd capacity at the Royal Community Center at the golf course.

“It was a lot of work,” Villegas said. “But it was great. The volunteers and I are ready to go again next year.”