In her first full year as executive director of the Charleston Wine + Food Festival, Alyssa Maute Smith said she’s proud of the programming organizers have curated. 

Storytelling and inclusivity are two notable themes for the annual event, set to take place in locations across the Charleston area March 6-10. 

A group of out-of-town chefs will travel to Charleston, but as in years past, local talent will headline the majority of the individually ticketed events. A handful of those chefs — Jacques Larson, Nikko Cagalanan and James London — were among the 11 South Carolinians named semifinalists for a James Beard Award on Jan. 24. 

“It’s exciting heading into the festival to have Charleston receive those accolades and that spotlight,” Maute Smith said. 

Several popular events will return to Charleston Wine + Food in 2024, including Shucked, Street Eats and Opening Night at College of Charleston’s Cistern Yard, historically the largest representation of local Charleston-area chefs. The festival’s finale will be held at Brittlebank Park on March 10.

For the second straight year, the festival will bring a free event to three blocks of Upper King Street from 6-8 p.m. March 7. A collaboration with the city of Charleston, the street fest will feature music, for-purchase food and beverages, and entertainment for the whole family. 

The festival’s three-day Culinary Village will be set along the Cooper River at North Charleston’s Riverfront Park for a third straight year. Featuring drinks and samples from local and visiting chefs, the event moved to the larger venue after taking place in Marion Square from 2005-2020.

This year, the Culinary Village’s demonstration stage will welcome Vivian Howard, Mike Lata and Amanda Freitag, while the rest of Riverfront Park will be decked out with snack stands offering food samples. “Experiential food moments,” including a Lowcountry boil eating experience, will showcase cuisine that is indicative of the Charleston area, Maute Smith said. 

Alongside the reimagined rosé garden in the Culinary Village, organizers have added a zero proof garden filled with alcohol-free beverages. This section will help elevate the booze-free beverage industry trend while making the Culinary Village more inclusive, Maute Smith said. 

Though many associate Charleston Wine + Food with its Culinary Village, it’s only one of a total of 109 events — many of which are sold out — on the schedule. Ticket holders will attend signature lunches and dinners, beverage workshops, cooking classes, bar takeovers and culinary excursions, all part of the five-day festival. 

Several of Charleston’s top restaurants will host signature lunches and dinners, including Lowland, Melfi’s, Vern’s, The Obstinate Daughter and Charleston Grill. Some of these meals will welcome out-of-town chefs into Charleston kitchens for evenings that celebrate global flavors. 

An event that sold out the day tickets went live, Palmira Barbecue’s dinner on March 7 will feature a collaboration between Vietnamese pitmaster Don Nguyen of Khoí Barbecue in Houston and Palmira owner Hector Garate, who hails from Puerto Rico.

On that same night, James Beard Award Emerging Chef semifinalist Nikko Cagalanan will host a traditional Filipino Kamayan feast in which guests are asked to eat with their hands as food is served directly on a table covered in banana leaves. Tickets to that event are still available. 

Charleston Wine + Food excursions take participants out in the fields or on the water before concluding with a collaborative meal. Some of these events, such as Back to the Dock with Backman Seafood on March 8, have been years in the making, Maute Smith said. 

The six-hour excursion tells the story of Backman’s Seafood, once the only Black-owned seafood company in the entire state. The tour, led by 2022 James Beard Award nominee Jamaal Lemon, takes guests on the water to explore the creeks just off James Island. The event concludes with a meal at the iconic Bowens Island Restaurant. 

“We wanted to make sure that it was a story that was told intentionally,” said Maute Smith, a Charleston native with a close connection to the city’s waterways. “I’m excited to see it come to fruition.” 

Another excursion called “Rooted: Indigenous Foodways” will be led by Dave Smoke McCluskey. A Mohawk chef, Indigenous foods instructor and owner of Corn Mafia, McCluskey will discuss how the Lowcountry’s first inhabitants foraged for and cooked with ingredients like beach plums and freshwater mussels. 

The Massachusetts native will also discuss interactions between indigenous people of the Lowcountry and enslaved Africans, touching on how disease, warfare and displacement gradually reduced their numbers. 

“A lot of local natives got shipped to the Caribbean and never came back,” McCluskey said. “It’s a part of history that we don’t always talk about.” 

As Charleston Wine + Food turns 19 this year, another food festival has announced it will come to town in 2024.

Led by Food & Wine, Southern Living and Travel + Leisure magazines, the inaugural Food & Wine Classic in Charleston is set to take place Sept. 27-29. The event is a spinoff of the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, first launched in 1983. The 41st Aspen festival is scheduled for June 14-16.

When she first heard the news, Maute Smith said she felt excited that her hometown could attract that kind of interest. Though Charleston Wine + Food and the Food & Wine Classic are both food festivals, the similarities end there, she said.

“What Charleston Wine + Food does is inherently different,” she said. 

“(Charleston Wine + Food) has never really been a celebrity chef festival,” added Maute Smith. “Yes, we bring in talent from outside of Charleston, but the focal point has always been Charleston.”

As a nonprofit, the Charleston Wine + Food Festival is invested in the local community, Maute Smith said. Her vision is to expand its reach to impact the Holy City in more ways year-round.