Riverbank Cheese & Wine lives on

The city’s signature festival celebrating cheese and wine was in danger of extinction last year when service clubs that had sponsored the event over the years burned out. City Hall came to the rescue, paid $3,000 for rights to the festival and hired Chris Ricci, a premier special-events promoter and the brains behind Modesto’s spectacularly successful X-Fest, to work his magic in Modesto’s midsize neighbor.

Ricci’s touch was apparent over two days in October with a big boost in quality and quantity of local cheese and wine, in a move to show off Riverbank’s remodeled downtown and with more for kids to do. Ricci’s people teamed with city staff to secure sponsorships, including $5,000 from CenCal Beverage Co. and $2,000 each from AM2T, Galaxy Theatres, Silgan Containers and Modesto Toyota.

Some vendors complained about the slow flow of a sold-out crowd of 1,600 through hot tents in the tasting area. City staff, several of whom volunteered off-work time to help Ricci make the Riverbank Cheese & Wine Exposition succeed, recently asked the City Council if it would rather let the event die or start a new tradition, but the council agreed to keep the festival going at least this year.

The Modesto Bee asked Sue Fitzpatrick, the city’s parks and recreation director, for her thoughts.

Q. With all of the changes to Cheese & Wine this year, what’s your general feeling on how it came out?

A. (The 2014) event did include some major changes and some risk-taking, but I feel it went very well and was successful. This was a large event for a small city staff to take over, so contracting with Chris Ricci Presents was extremely helpful. Chris brought in the contacts and expertise needed for a smooth transition.

Q. What was better this year?

A. Bringing the event downtown worked very well. People enjoyed the atmosphere, food, music and the carnival. We tried to avoid the residential area as much as we could. The carnival was held at a local church in years past on the same weekend. Our idea was to bring the two events together, and this worked out great.

Q. Do you have attendance figures?

A. Without a gate fee, it is difficult to estimate attendance. We do know that it was up from last year. Our guess would be maybe 20,000 at the event.

Q. How about challenges?

A. There were some challenges in implementing the festival, with the main one being the cheese- and wine-tasting logistics. We will fix the challenges associated with the tasting area. We learned a great deal and will improve on this part of the festival. There were more wineries involved, and the wine and cheese were of high quality.

Q. Did the event make or lose money this year?

A. Our goal was to at least break even. Thanks to our many sponsors, we did even better than that, with $5,500 left. No city funds were needed, as revenue from the event covered all of the expenses.

Q. Who gets the extra money?

A. It will be used toward next year’s event.

Q. Who obtained sponsorships? How much did they account for?

A. Chris Ricci got half the sponsorships, and the city Parks and Recreation Department obtained half. Our sponsorship goal was $20,000, and we raised $18,000. We are very appreciative of our sponsors. This gave us a great start, and we would not have been able to do it without them.

Q. What were the financial arrangements?

A. We did need to purchase the rights to the event from the Riverbank Rotary Club and did contract with Chris Ricci Presents. Those financial obligations were paid through revenue from the event.

Q. Will the city continue to hold Cheese & Wine in the future?

A. Yes. The City Council gave staff direction to continue to host the event in 2015 and most likely 2016. City staff and Chris Ricci Presents will begin working on making the event even more successful this year.

This story was originally published January 18, 2015 at 5:08 PM with the headline "Riverbank Cheese & Wine lives on."