The weather held off enough to allow a nice crowd to gather on Main Street Saturday afternoon for the inaugural BudBreak Wine Festival.

People traveled from across the state and beyond to attend the festival, which allowed attendees to try many of the wines from the area as well as take a look at a number of fine arts vendors.

Attendees walked up and down Main Street from the intersection with Independence Boulevard to Oak Street, sampling wines and enjoying the food provided by some local restaurants. The 26 wine vendors and nine fine arts vendors, traveling from as far away as the Outer Banks, spoke to the attendees about their preferences with wines before making a recommendation about what to taste or talked to them about the art pieces they brought to sell. In addition to their wines, several vendors also offered sangria made with one of their wines as a base. A number of premium food vendors were also on hand to offer food to complement the different wines.

“It’s impossible to know how many (visitors) came through. We had some great crowds come through. Based on the response from the vendors and the participants, they were all pleased with the organization of the event. We had a great response from the people who came,” said Bob Meinecke, president of Mount Airy Rotary Club, which hosted the event in collaboration with the Downtown Business Association. “Everybody commented on the quality of those foods.”

Don and Donna Eash decided to head out to the festival to show support for the town.

“It’s a good opportunity to try all the local wineries without having to drive to them,” said Donna.

“It’s very nice and well organized. It’s very impressive and seems like a good turnout,” said Don of the number of wineries in attendance.

Shelby Nichols, who lives in the White Plains community, remembered the festival was happening when she brought friends from out-of-town to downtown and decided to participated.

“So far I’m very happy,” she said of the festival, adding that she believes events such as this will help draw other people to the area as well.

The festival did indeed draw out-of-towners to the area who were visiting specifically for the event. Ella and Joseph DeRouselle drove in from Kinston to participate. They have been impressed by the number of wines that are available in North Carolina as they are new to the state.

“We’re retired and we’re trying to see what’s here. This is a beautiful place to be,” said Ella. “We’re learning a lot about North Carolina. We’ve lived in Uruguay and in Germany and Italy so we know about the wines there. But we had no idea there were so many here, and they’re good.”

Stefan Jeglinski lives in Durham and when he heard about the festival decided to bring Sharon Love along. Love is not from North Carolina and enjoyed the opportunity to explore more of the state.

“It’s a good weekend away,” she said.

“I thought this would be a good way for her to get a little more information about North Carolina and see some local color,” said Jeglinski. “It’s been nice.”

Wine vendors were mostly pleased with the turnout for the festival since it is the first one. They hope that it will continue to grow and attract more people to the area. Shelton Vineyards’ staff said they had a number of people approach their booth to try the Riesling, which was proclaimed best in show by judges at the wine tasting held Friday.

Meinecke hopes to see the event continue in the future as do the major sponsors for the event.

“The major sponsors want to do more next year. They’re already on board,” he said. “Everything was positive. There were no incidents of any kind. It was a quality group of people that attended the event.”

Many of the visitors said they were surprised to see the group of Baptists assembled at the entrances to the festival. They applied for a permit to proclaim their faith. The group held signs proclaiming messages such as “Christ died to deliver you from sin” and “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging.”

“We were especially entertained by the cadre of church people at the entrance,” said Jeglinski.

Some of the local people attending the festival said they were sad to see the group there because they felt it was unnecessary. However, they said the proclaimers had a right to be there because of freedom of speech.

Contact Morgan Wall at mwall@mtairynews.com or 719-1929.