Lake Oconee Food and Wine Festival serves up red, white, and views

GREENSBORO, Ga. - It’s easy to RSVP "yes" to an event featuring great food and wines along the banks of beautiful Lake Oconee. 

But it’s an even more obvious green light when that event supports educational and community programs for area youth.

This morning on Good Day Atlanta, we headed down to Greensboro and the Ritz-Carlton Reynolds, Lake Oconee, which is hosting this year’s Lake Oconee Food and Wine Festival. The three-day event features the region’s best chefs cooking up bites that pair perfectly with more than 200 wines sourced from around the world. The main event of the weekend is The Grand Tasting, which happens from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday evening, but there are plenty of scheduled activities including tonight’s Bourbon and Bites Dinner, a Saturday morning Ride and Drive (you know you want to take a spin in a McLaren!) and day-long shopping extravaganza on Saturday at The Market Place. 

The Lake Oconee Food and Wine Festival was launched in 2008 by a group of volunteers from the Redeemer Episcopal School; since then, the event has grown into its own nonprofit and has raised more than $2 million for schools and children’s charities in Putnam, Greene, and Baldwin counties. Beneficiaries this year include the Georgia Writers Museum, Putnam Reads, and Baldwin-Putnam Young Life. 

For more information on this year’s Lake Oconee Food and Wine Festival — and to check out a full schedule of events — click here. And click the video player in this article to check out our morning at the Ritz-Carlton Reynolds, doing a little taste-testing for a great cause!