Pyrmont Festival of Food Wine & Art | Program Announced

FULL  PROGRAM  ANNOUNCED  FOR PYRMONT FESTIVAL OF FOOD, WINE & ART IN PARTNERSHIP WITH MUDGEE REGION, 3 – 15 MAY 2011

The Pyrmont Ultimo Chamber of Commerce (PUCC) and Mudgee Wine Grape Growers Association (MWGGA) are delighted to announce the full program of activities for the Pyrmont Festival of Food, Wine and Art, 3 – 15 May.

The festival – in partnership with Mudgee Region – is a celebration of the best food, wine and creative talent from both the Pyrmont and Mudgee Region. The 12 day program will see ‘Pyrmont Uncork Mudgee’ with a series of wine and food matched lunches and dinners at 13 of Pyrmont’s premier restaurants including the award winning Signorelli Gastronomia and Blue Eye Dragon, as well as Sydney’s fine dining seafood restaurant – Flying Fish. The future stars of Australia’s culinary industry will also be serving up a feast at TAFE’s The Apprentice.

Saving the best until last, the grand finale will be a one day sensory extravaganza on Sunday 15th at Pyrmont’s award-winning Pirrama Park, on the waterfront. Visitors are invited to come and sample over 120 different wines from 30 Mudgee winemakers. To complete the taste-sensation, gourmet foods and unique cuisine from across Pyrmont and the Mudgee Region will be available for tasting.

In the centre of the park, the 5th annual Pyrmont Art Prize will have over 300 pieces of bespoke art on sale from a range of budding and professional artists from metropolitan Sydney and the Mudgee area. All art pieces submitted for the Pyrmont Art Prize are featured on identical, 12-inch squared canvasses, creating a quilt of diverse colours and subjects in a range of media from paintings to photographs to mounted reliefs. The works will be judged by an expert panel with over $10,000 worth of prizes up for grabs. Throughout the day there will be roving entertainers and a performance stage, hosted by ABC Sunday Today presenter Whitney Fitzsimmons.

Lawrence Gibbons, President of PUCC, is thrilled to see Pyrmont making its mark on Sydney’s events calendar: “Pyrmont is enjoying tremendous growth in tourism and that’s largely thanks to the increasing number of first class restaurants in the area. We wanted to combine our annual

Pyrmont Art Prize with an acknowledgement of Pyrmont’s burgeoning dining precinct and our partnership and synergies with Mudgee Region to create an all-encompassing celebration: Pyrmont Festival.”

“As Pyrmont has undergone a dining renaissance with new restaurants and big-name chefs coming to the precinct, so too has the Mudgee Region wine industry seen young, up and coming winemakers like Jacob Stein (Robert Stein), Michael Slater (Thistle Hill), Josh Clementson

(Skimstone), Julia Conchie (Di Lusso) and Robert Black (Bunnamagoo) offer new varietals and fresh interpretations of well-known varieties,” adds Lucy White, CEO of Mudgee Region Tourism Inc. “We are one of Australia’s first regions with an organic wine movement with the oldest

certified organic grower at Botobolar; the award-winning Thistle Hill; and five organic wineries. Visitors to Pyrmont Festival will enjoy a diverse range of quality wines the Mudgee Region has to offer, from organic to Italian varietals and our renowned big, bold reds.”

Alongside the wine and food matched dinners, other highlights of Pyrmont Festival include:

• Sparkling wine and fresh oysters on Mother’s Day at Sydney Fish Market

• Free nutritious cooking workshops at Sanctuary – Sanitarium

• Wine tastings at various wine stores throughout Pyrmont and Ultimo

• Art Think & Play Family Workshop at not-for-profit centre, Culture at Work

“Pyrmont skirts the harbour, has wonderful cafes, restaurants and bars and the largest fish markets in the Southern Hemisphere – it’s a village worth celebrating,” said Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP. “I look forward to enjoying an afternoon by the water at Pirrama Park, where growers and winemakers from the Mudgee region will show off some of their best food and wine.”

Full details of the program, how to book a lunch or dinner, and how to enter the Pyrmont Art Prize can be found at www.pyrmontfestival.com.

PUCC and MWGGA would like to thank the following for their support:

• Tourism NSW
• NSW Department of Industry and Investment
• Star City
• City of Sydney