Festival
Tides & Terroir
Friday, October 16, 2026 – Saturday, October 17, 2026
Asilomar State Beach & Conference Grounds, Pacific Grove
Full Schedule
October 16–17 · Asilomar, Pacific Grove
Wine, Food & Community — Rooted on the Monterey Coast
Tides & Terroir is a two-day celebration of the Monterey coast — its wines, its cuisine, its makers, and the multigenerational farming community that has shaped one of California's most distinctive food and wine regions. Both days unfold at Asilomar State Beach & Conference Grounds, Monterey Peninsula’s “Refuge by the Sea.”
Friday, October 16 — A Coastal Table
The Monterey coast has a story worth telling. It begins in the cold waters of the bay, moves through the fog-laced hillside farms and valley fields, and ends in the highlands cellars where the Pacific wind shapes every bottle. On Friday evening, October 16, that story comes to the table.
A Coastal Table is a multi-course, hyperlocal feast at Merrill Hall, one of Asilomar’s celebrated Arts & Crafts spaces. Five acclaimed local chefs interpret the coast’s ingredients course by course: from the sea, from the valley, from the highlands, and from the cellars. Featured chefs include Justin Cogley of Aubergine Carmel, Jonny Black of Chez Noir, Amalia Scatena of Stationaery, Chef Hollie Jackson, Ron Mendoza of Ad Astra Bread, and more.
Each course is paired with wines from three multigenerational farming families who have shaped this winegrowing region: Caraccioli Cellars, Pisoni Family Vineyards, and ROAR Wines. Music provided by the Monterey Symphony, live entertainment by Carmel Delights Dance Company.
A Coastal Table is many things at once — a celebration of place, a gathering of the community that grows, catches, cooks, and pours on this stretch of California coast, and one very good reason to pull up a chair. Seating is limited, this event will sell out.
Saturday, October 17 -Tasting by the Tides
The weekend moves outdoors on Saturday. The Grand Cypress Meadow is a short walk from the dunes, and for three hours it becomes the center of the Monterey Bay’s wine and food community.
Dozens of wineries pour the best from Monterey, from long-established family estates to newer names making their mark on the region. Local chefs and food purveyors work the meadow alongside them, serving bites built around the same coastal ingredients that define the region. A market of local craftspeople runs alongside the tasting, selling wares that are as much a product of this coast as the wine in your glass. Live music carries across the meadow with the Pacific just steps away. 12-3 pm
Lodging packages are available at Asilomar State Beach & Conference Grounds, Pacific Grove, California. Book your coastal weekend escape below.
Purveyors & Artisans
Tasting by the Tides
Saturday, October 17
Wineries
Belle Glos, Bernardus, Bruliam Wines, Caraccioli Cellars, Clarice Wine Company, CRU Winery, Dawn’s Dream, I Brand Wines, Joyce Wine Company, McIntyre Family Wines, Mer Soleil, Morét Brealynn Wines, Morgan Winery, Odonata, Pelio Estate, Pisoni Family Vineyards, Private Property Wines, Riboli Family Wines, ROAR Wines, Rustiqué Wines, Testarossa, Wrath and more.
Chefs & Food Purveyors
Ad Astra, Adam Silverstein, Bee’s Knees Bakery, Baker’s Bacon, Chieftess Monterey Bay, Earthbound Farms, Grasing's, Crema Lover’s Point & La Crème Monterey, La Playa Hotel, Nice Kid Pizza, Oystertown, Paradise Catering, Quoign Chocolates, Sea Shack Candy Co., Stationaery, The Cheese Shop, and Toro Sushi.
Artisans
Casey Starks Studio, Coastal Club 831, Hamilton Hat Lounge, Valley Botanicals, and BONDED Jewelry x Hamilton Hat Lounge, High Flow Gallery artists Bekah Bull and Jason Kurzer are live-painting surfboards for auction to support the Monterey State Historic Parks Association, donated by Boynton Surfboards.
*Presenting wine and food partners are subject to change.
Event Partners & Acknowledgments
Asilomar Conference Grounds, Caraccioli Cellars, Earthbound Farms (Produce Sponsor), Monterey State Historic Parks Association.
October 16-17, Asilomar State Beach & Conferene Grounds, Pacific Grove
Tides & Terroir
Celebrating the wine, cuisine and community that define Monterey Bay
What to Expect
TIDES & TERROIR Tasting by the Tides doesn't feel like a festival. It feels like a coastal open-air market that happens to be pouring some of Monterey County's best wine. On Saturday, October 17, Grand Cypress Meadow at Asilomar opens for three hours: winemakers, chefs, and artisans set up under the open sky, a short walk from the Pacific. Expect breezes off the bay, dune trails nearby, and the kind of unhurried pace that comes from an event built around a meadow surrounded by old cypress trees instead of a convention ballroom or parking lot.
- THE VENUE
The Grand Cypress Meadow sits within the Asilomar Conference Grounds, a National Historic Landmark built beginning in 1913 as a leadership camp for young women, commissioned by the YWCA. Its original buildings were designed by Julia Morgan, the first woman licensed as an architect in California, and eleven of her structures still stand on the property today. Asilomar State Beach is a short walk away: a mile of rocky coves and dune trails. This is not a resort ballroom or a downtown plaza. It's a working piece of California history, steps from the water.
- THE WINERIES
Two dozen wineries pour on Saturday, from Santa Lucia Highlands anchors like Pisoni Family Vineyards, ROAR Wines, and Mer Soleil to next-generation producers pushing past Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, including Morgan Winery, Joyce Wine Company, I. Brand & Family, and Private Property Wines. Because the pours are spread across an open meadow rather than lined up under one tent, real conversations with winemakers and pourers happen. This is a chance to taste the range of wines from a single region that is distinctly impacted by the Monterey Bay, nothing else quite like it exists along California’s coastal wine country.
- THE FOOD
Food comes from Monterey chefs and purveyors working with local ingredients and producers when possible: Grasing's, La Playa Hotel, Nice Kid Pizza, Oystertown, Paradise Catering, Quoign Chocolates, Sea Shack Candy Co., Ad Astra Bread Co., Adam Silverstein, Chieftess Monterey Bay, Stationaery and The Cheese Shop are among this year's list. Earthbound Farms provides produce for the chefs and pops up a mini-farmers market at Tasting by the Tides. Expect bites built around bay seafood, valley produce, and local cheese and honey, not a standard festival spread.
- THE ARTISANS
The artisan market is built to be interactive. High Flow Gallery artists Bekah Bull and Jason Kurzer will live-paint surfboards donated by Boynton Surfboards, with the finished boards going up for auction in support of Monterey State Historic Parks Association. Casey Starks Studio will show off her hand-formed pottery and explain why and how she crafts without a potter’s wheel. BONDED Jewelry X Hamilton Hat Lounge will custom-fit bonded jewelry cowboy hats while you watch. Valley Botanicals’ plant-powered elixirs from the Big Sur tell the story of the coast’s flora. Watch something get made in front of you, then take it home.
- WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT
Tides & Terroir is smaller and slower by design: one meadow, twenty-some wineries, a dozen chefs and artisans, three hours. It's built for people who want to talk to the person who made what they're drinking, watch an artist paint a surfboard between pours, and feel like they've spent an afternoon in the park rather than at a production.
Proceeds from Tides & Terroir support the Monterey State Historic Park Association, which funds educational programs for schools, the Los Exploradores summer camp, and Christmas in the Adobes, Monterey's candlelight holiday walking tour that has run since 1983.
Tasting by the Tides: Saturday, October 17, 12 to 3 pm, Grand Cypress Meadow, Asilomar Conference Grounds. $125 per person. Reserve your tickets today.
