Beale Street Wine Race is Sunday

The Great Beale Street Wine Race is Sunday. Servers and bartenders from restaurants all over town blow off steam before the busy Memphis in May season, while competing for their restaurants in several categories:

1) There is a parade where the teams enter Handy Park on floats.

2) Next is Queen of the Vine. Beauties from area restaurants compete. (In a few cases, I’m using the term “beauties” very, very loosely.)

3) Next up is a grape-stomping competition, where teams see who can stomp the most grape juice with their feet in a certain time limit.

4) Last up is the wine relay, where four-member teams race to see who can open bottles of wine the quickest and then run them on a tray, with glasses, to the other end of the course where they hand the tray off to the next team member.

It’s free and a lot of fun to watch. Action kicks off around 1 PM. PRO TIP: If you’re not driving, get a Call-a-Cab daiquiri from Wet Willie’s to drink while you watch. More than one Call-a-Cab falls into the “don’t try this at home” category, so be careful.

This Wine Race presents a bit of a dilemma for me, because I’m “mayor” of two bars that are participating in the event: Blind Bear and Silly Goose. They’ve both contacted me about wearing their shirt to Wine Race. Trying to figure out how to maintain neutrality. (The third bar of which I’m “mayor,” Flying Saucer, doesn’t participate in Wine Race, although for a while it was considered.)

What should YOU wear to Wine Race? Well, Sunday looks to be the one day this weekend free from rain, and temps will warm back up. For females who will be attending, may I suggest a tube top?

Hope to see you down on Beale for Debauchery Day, er, I mean Wine Race!