Vintage Festival cancels September events

For the first time in over 70 years, the Valley of the Moon Vintage Festival has been canceled. Maria Toimil, the president of the nonprofit festival’s board of directors, sent a message to the festival’s regular participants, beneficiaries and supporters in late May, saying the board had made “the tough decision to cancel Vintage Festival this year, putting the health and safety of our community first.”

The annual event, founded in 1897, takes place in September during the peak of harvest, and is a celebration of the Valley’s premiere agricultural industry. It was last cancelled in World War II.

The 2020 event was scheduled from Sept. 25-27 with its usual assortment of live music, wine tasting, culinary exhibits, a grape stomp, winery arts festival and many family-friendly activities.

The weekend-long event is not only a way for Sonoma to celebrate its wine-making traditions, but a major vehicle for donations to a number of local causes: everything from high school sports including wrestling and football to FFA to organizations including Native Sons of the Golden West, Vintage House senior center, Sonoma Valley firefighters and others.

The organizations who receive support from the event all volunteer in one way or another at the festival, doing everything from setup to cleanup, security, and “schlepping things around,” as Toimil said.

“We are very disappointed, there is going to be a lot of the community that will be disappointed,” said Toimil. She said donations from the community ranges between $20,000 to $42,000 each year. “This will be my seventh year, we’ve never donated less than $20,000.”

About 60 people had already purchased tickets for the Friday Night Gala, the popular wine-tasting, dining and dancing part in the Plaza scheduled for Sept. 25. But with the letter announcing the cancellation of the 2020 festival, Toimil encouraged them to regard their ticket purchase as a donation, and not request a refund.

“We only had maybe 15 ask for a refund,” said Toimil. A similar result came in the art festival portion of the weekend, which saw “95 percent” of the applicants choose to roll over their participation until next year, rather than ask for a refund.

But Vintage Festival 2020 will not just disappear. Festival organizers usually hold a poster contest in spring for the autumnal festival, and even though the festival won’t happen, the poster contest will, probably at the end of June. “We thought we might honor the tradition with a poster contest – maybe we can memorialize it in that fashion, so we’ll still have the 2020 poster so people can remember these days,” said Toimil.

But September is still several months away, and the board holds out hope they may be able to continue the tradition in some way. Said Toimil, “If by some miracle things turn around, we might throw a little something together to signify the festival – blessing of the grapes, or the wine tasting – but it won’t be anything like we’ve had in the past.”

Donations will continue to be accepted at valleyofthemoonvintagefestival.com, with the same beneficiaries hoping to receive some much-needed income from Vintage Festival 2020.

Email christian.kallen@sonomanews.com.