WAMMfest Successful Once Again in Celebrating Indiana Wine, Art, Music and Microbrew

23 Aug WAMMfest Successful Once Again in Celebrating Indiana Wine, Art, Music and Microbrew

By Mathew Muncy

Holding an outdoor event during the summer months in Indiana always brings the risk of rain, and while the weather was a bit bipolar last Saturday, it didn’t keep people from attending the annual WAMMfest in Greenwood.

This year’s wine, art, music, and microbrew festival featured nine Indiana wineries, 10 Indiana breweries, 11 bands, 19 restaurants and food trucks, and an entire section of the park dedicated to artist alley. The gates opened at 11 a.m. and didn’t close until 8 p.m. but with a radar showing storms a brewing, my wife and I were unsure if we’d catch a dry spot at all. Luckily, we caught one around 2 p.m.

Getting into the festival was a breeze, at least once we found the gate where our media passes were being held. (That’s what I get for not doing my homework before heading to the festival.) Once in, our first stop was the booth where we received our bracelet that allowed us to obtain alcoholic beverages without being carded each time.

WAMMfest—put on by the Sertoma Club of Greenwood—was strategically set up with food and beverage stations throughout the park, instead of in just one area. We scoped out the beer scene, trying to decide where we wanted to stop first. The choice was easy once we saw Quaff ON! Brewing Co. had brought their Strawberry Blonde. This beer has the perfect amount of strawberry flavor without detracting from the blonde ale itself.

With beers in hand, we descended upon the artist alley to check out the homemade wares. It was a lot of goods that you would find at any event that featured artists: jewelry, pottery, woodworking, and art pieces, e.g. paintings, drawings, etc. Of course, a couple individuals had alcohol themed pieces and I checked them out, for research.

An artist named Audwynn Newman was selling a couple pieces with a “Drink Local” beer theme to them. It was a standard drawing that he had created prints of, but he’d also taken a piece of wood, cut it into the shape of Indiana, and added the print on top of it. It was a masterpiece, at least in my mind.

A couple booths down, a lady was selling wooden signs—ones that you would hang around your home—that had funny alcohol sayings on them. However, she had a homemade liquor dispenser which allowed you to put any bottle of liquor in. It was pretty cool, but out of my price range, so we moved on before I did something financially stupid.

While we scoured the booths, looking for things to frivolously purchase, it continued to rain off and on. It would pour for 30 seconds, then drizzle for 60 seconds, and ultimately stop. One of the weirder rain patterns of the year, that’s for sure.

At this point, we were out of beer, wet from the rain, and a tad annoyed by the weather. Only one thing could cure the annoyed feeling: more beer! We went in search of an area of was a little drier which led us to Tow Yard Brewing and their Airstream-style camper. They were situated under some trees, a perfect place for us to stand and drink. I grabbed a pint of their Hook Up shandy—easily my favorite shandy; yes, even more than Leinenkugel. My wife wasn’t really feeling their lineup and decided she wanted some wine, so we said goodbye to our dry spot and went in search.

I noticed that close by Tow Yard’s camper was one of the music stages, with a full crowd. Throughout the day, bands would play at two different stages; mostly cover songs, but there were likely some originals thrown in there. The music, mixed with the rain, created this unique ambiance that I’ve only felt at music festivals before. Many of the older attendees were having a blast near the stage, dancing around in the rain without a care in the world, almost as if they were transported back to Woodstock.

My wife settled on Holtkamp Winery as she was intrigued by their watermelon fruit wine. I’m not much of a wine drinker, but even I thought it was pretty good. One thing I noticed as we traveled from booth to booth was the lack of lines. There was a decent size crowd at WAMMfest, but we never waited longer than say two or three minutes to get a drink. I believe the setup and ease of alcohol purchasing helped greatly in that area.

By this time we’d found some of our family and friends, and headed back to the drier area. Before I realized it, my shandy was gone and it was time for one last beer. Cedar Creek Brewery was next to the table we had snagged and they had a Kentucky Common, a beer I’d never tried before. After doing some research, I found this is a style of beer that’s not brewed much and is a similar style to a California Common.

With nearly three beers in my stomach, I was starting to get hungry and the smell of BBQ was becoming too much for me to bear. There were several BBQ booths but I chose Whiskey River BBQ, mainly because I had never had their food. For a cheap $7, I grabbed a pulled pork sandwich and some baked beans, which were both quickly scarfed down because they were unbelievably delicious.

By this time the rain had become more than we wanted to deal with, and the sky was getting darker by the minute, so we decided to head home. WAMMfest was once again a great experience. Each year we’ve gone it’s been a blast, and it helps that it’s so well put together. Typically you can find at least one thing to minorly complain about but outside of the weather, which they can’t control, it was worth our time and wet clothes.