Pebble Beach Food and Wine Festival

• The Pebble Beach Food and Wine Festival happens in in mid-April. It runs from Thursday evening through mid-day Sunday,

• Morning and afternoon sessions feature wine tastings and chef's demos, several running concurrently.

• Special lunches and dinners feature food and wine pairings from a wide range of top-shelf chefs and wineries.

• Pebble Beach Food and Wine Festival website

Pebble Beach Food and Wine Festival is held at facilities in Pebble Beach and in large pavilions on the grounds.

Pebble Beach has plenty of room for the Food and Wine Festival, especially with the large pavilions put up to augment indoor space. Parking lots can fill up quickly, though.

• Park it. Your car, that is. Take the shuttle between venues.

• Grand Tastings are one of the best values for money, showcasing a large number of chefs and wineries in one place.

• Pace yourself. One meal and one tasting or cooking demo in a day is more than enough. Use the rest of the time for a nap or a walk.

• Those we met who stayed at hotels outside Pebble Beach complained about not having time to go back and change for dinner - it takes too much time.

• If you're running a little late for a meal, don't fret. Each is preceded by an informal appetizer reception and no one will notice.

Pebble Beach Food and Wine Festival earns 5 stars out of 5 for the quality of the venue, chefs, wines and service, as well as impressive organization and execution. Even better is the quality of chefs and vintners who attend. It's a rare chance to have chefs like Cindy Pawlcyn (Mustard's Grill) serve you their creations or vintners like Ravenswood's legendary Joel Peterson pouring the latest vintage.

In fact, our only complaint is that we didn't have time (or capacity) to enjoy more.

The Pebble Beach Food and Wine Festival is held at the Pebble Beach Resort.

Take CA Hwy 1 to Monterey and Carmel, exit at the 17-Mile Drive exit and follow the signs.

The Pebble Beach Food and Wine Festival website has information about how make your reservations. You can buy packages or purchase tickets to events individually.

We attended the festival in April, 2009. Our itinerary included live demos from Jacques Pepin and Rick Tramonto of Chicago's TRU Cuisine. We learned how sommeliers do a blind wine-tasting. Meals included a farm to table lunch, a dinner created around 120 magnums of 5 vintages of Cristal champagne. Our favorite? A dinner prepared by Michelin-rated chefs from Los Angeles where each course unbelievably outdid the one before it, culminating in a flourless chocolate cake from Nancy Silverton paired with a Heitz Cellar port that together were pure perfection. It was enough to make this Bay Area foodie concede that those folks down south can do some really great cooking.

A venue like Pebble Beach can attract the best names from across the world, and they show up in person rather than sending their kitchen staff as can happen at other events. In fact, there were so many big-name chefs and winemakers there that one almost worried what might happen to world cuisine in the event of a disaster.

Of course, Pebble Beach is a high-end venue and the festival is not a cheap little "taste of" kind of event. Prices rival what you'd pay for dinner at The French Laundry or for wine tasting at a handful of high-end Napa wineries. Packages bring down the price per event, but risk over-satiating their purchasers.

You get what you pay for, they say and in this case it's true. The experience is well worth it for those who love food and wine.

As is common in the travel industry, the writer was provided with complimentary admission for the purpose of reviewing this event. While it has not influenced this review, About.com believes in full disclosure of all potential conflicts of interest. For more information, see our ethics policy.