Newport Beach Food and Wine Festival: What to Expect in May

I came to the Newport Beach Food and Wine Festival expecting a polite afternoon of small sips and ended up rearranging my entire opinion of what a wine weekend on the water can be. Show up hungry. I mean it.

Held annually at the Balboa Bay Club, usually the first week of May, this is a weekend-long event and one of the better reasons to point yourself toward Newport in late spring. The weather has turned, the harbor is glassy in the mornings, and the festival gives you a structured excuse to eat and drink extremely well right on the bay.

The wine is the headline, but barely

Some of the best wineries in California turn up to pour their distinctive bottles, and the lineup leans toward the kind of producers you read about but rarely get to taste side by side. You won't be hunting for cocktails here — this is a wine and food event, full stop — and that focus is a feature. Spending a couple of hours moving from table to table, comparing what different vineyards do with the same grape, taught me more than a dozen restaurant glasses ever did.

If the festival sparks a habit, it's an easy one to take home. A decent wine gift set and a proper electric wine opener turn a Tuesday into something a little more festival-shaped, and a stemless wine glass set survives a backyard better than the fragile good ones.

Come hungry, leave very full

The food is the part people underestimate. On a typical night you'll find mounds of shrimp, oysters in every preparation, fish, pasta, and a parade of seafood and exotic treats that keeps appearing faster than you can pace yourself. My one regret from year one was filling up early on bread — rookie error. Skip the easy stuff and chase the seafood, because that's where the kitchens show off.

If raw oysters are new to you, this is a forgiving place to try them; there's enough variety that you'll find one that clicks. And if you fall for it the way I did, a home oyster shucking knife and a seafood serving platter are how the habit follows you home without a second mortgage.

My practical pacing advice, learned the hard way: treat the food like a tasting, not a buffet. Small plates, lots of stops, water between everything. The temptation is to load up at the first impressive table, but the festival is a marathon of good things, and the people who pace themselves are still happily eating two hours in while the chargers-ahead crowd is slumped in a chair. Alternate a bite, a sip, and a few minutes of just standing by the water, and you'll get through far more of it.

The cognac and cigar seminar

The quiet highlight, the thing returning guests circle on the schedule, is the cognac and cigar seminar. You sit, you sip genuinely superb cognac, and someone who actually knows what they're talking about walks you through what you're tasting and how fine cigars are made and graded. It's unhurried and a little indulgent and exactly the kind of thing a festival is for — learning something while enjoying it, instead of one or the other. Even as a casual drinker, I left understanding why people get obsessive about this stuff.

What makes the seminar work is the format. It's seated, it's small, and it's actually taught — you're not just handed a glass and left to guess. The presenter walks the room through how the spirit is aged, what the color tells you, and why a particular cigar pairs the way it does, and suddenly the vocabulary that always sounded like snobbery starts making plain sense. It's the one part of the weekend I'd tell a first-timer not to skip, even if they think it's "not really their thing." It wasn't really mine either, and it became the part I talk about most.

Make a weekend of it

The festival is reason enough to visit, but don't fly in and out for a single session. May is arguably Newport's best month, and the rest of the area earns the trip. Mornings on the harbor, an afternoon at the festival, evenings walking it off along the bay — that's the rhythm. A solid weekender travel bag covers a two-night stay without overpacking, and comfortable slip on walking shoes matter more than you'd guess on the club's grounds and the waterfront paths.

One scheduling note worth the trouble: book your room early and book it close. The Balboa Bay Club and the waterfront fill up around festival weekend, and a place within walking distance means you can enjoy the wine without negotiating a drive afterward. The whole appeal of a weekend like this is that you don't have to be anywhere — so set it up so you genuinely don't. Roll out of bed to the harbor, drift over to the festival, and let the day make its own shape.

The honest verdict

If you love food, wine, and being near the water, this lands close to a perfect weekend. It's indulgent without being stuffy, educational without being a lecture, and the setting does a lot of the work. Pace yourself, prioritize the seafood, catch the cognac seminar, and bring a reusable picnic blanket for the downtime by the bay. Newport in May, with a glass in hand, is hard to beat.