Rootstock fest: tastings, food, music

Joel Quigley, right, and Cailyn McCauley are putting on the annual Rootstock food and music festival. (Crista Jeremiason/PD

As you drive by, casually taking a sideways glance, you might dismiss the site of the second annual Rootstock Festival as an average strip mall.

But it’s not. For the past couple of years, Vintners Square on Cleveland Avenue has been steadily reinventing itself as an “urban wine village.”

Rootstock, a day of wine and beer tastings, gourmet food truck fare and live music, is the most public part of that transformation.

Started last year by the husband-and-wife team of Joel Quigley and Cailyn McCauley and produced by their promotions firm, Creative Furnace, the festival is an informal yet sophisticated gathering for those who love food, wine, beer and music.

The event drew 500 people last year, and returns for its second year on Saturday.

“We can create a very contemporary, very cool urban wine experience,” Quigley said. “We had an opportunity to do an event where we feel everything is really super high-quality on every level. And yet it’s casual and affordable, and it’s just not pretentious.”

The Rootstock Festival seemed a logical next step for the small shopping center. It has been home to the D’Argenzio Winery for 15 years, and owner Ray D’Argenzio has been presenting his outdoor Wine Down Thursday concerts, complete with gourmet food trucks, for the past two years there. He also plans a kitchen.

Now Ray’s brother, Dino D’Argenzio, and Dino’s wife, Maria, own and run two operations at Vintners Square: The Wineyard, a tasting room pouring wine from five local wineries, and Heritage Public House, serving beers from ultra-small “nano breweries.”

Sheldon Winery and Krutz Family Cellars also run production facilities at the square. A barbershop and cigar store fill out the center’s other slots, for a full house.