Food & Wine Classic tickets available for discounted rate through July 31

Now through July 31, you can buy discounted weekend passes to the inaugural Food & Wine Classic in Charleston, a fall food festival hosted by Food & Wine, Southern Living and Travel + Leisure and presented by Explore Charleston.

We bemoaned the original price of passes ($2,450) when the festival announced ticket sales in May. While that price returns after July 31, now is your chance to snag passes for a $500 discount.

The festival takes place September 27-29 in and around Charleston and features over 40 celebrity chef cooking demos; wine and cocktail seminars; and the festival’s “Grand Tasting Pavilion,” which features hundreds of winemakers, distillers and culinary experts.

Here’s who’s coming

Food & Wine recently announced its talent lineup, which includes big names like Tyler Florence, Al Roker, Maneet Chauhan, Sean Brock, Tamron Hall and Andrew Zimmern. In addition to the celebrity-tier foodies, there are a number of local participants, including the Cocktail Bandits, The Tippling House’s Matt Conway, FIG’s Mike Lata, Graft’s Femi Oyediran and Miles White, Rodney Scott and more.

Your weekend pass gets you access to the Grand Tasting Pavilion, which is open in two-hour sessions four times throughout the weekend. You can also attend up to five additional events, including cooking demos, wine tastings or panel discussions. The full schedule of events is online now.

Local-focused seminars include talks from Vivian Howard (Lenoir) with “Flip the Dish: How to Make Vegetables the Star of the Show;” James London (Chubby Fish) with “Wild Shrimpin’ Ain’t Easy: The Journey From Catch to Cuisine; Bethany Heinze (Vern’s) with “Super Summer Sippers: The World of Low ABV & Wine-Based Cocktails” and John Lewis (Lewis Barbecue) and Rodney Scott (Rodney Scott’s BBQ) with “The Barbecue Sides Smackdown.”

City Paper contributor Amethyst Ganaway will speak as part of the seminar, “The City That Rice Built,” with Jeff Gordinier and Jonathan Green, moderated by Alexander Smalls.

Passholders also have the opportunity to buy tickets to three experiences (with more events to be announced, including, according to a press release, a “dine around series” in the city’s “top restaurants”).

The experiences include a Lowcountry tailgate at the site of Southern Living’s 2024 Idea House on Kiawah; a style stroll online King Street with Travel + Leisure’s editor in chief, Jacqui Gifford and a crabbing and cooking experience that shows guests how to harvest crabs and transform them into regional dishes.

Learn more online at foodandwineclassicincharleston.com.