“Everything went pretty smoothly.”

The Gloucester County Chamber of Commerce’s annual wine festival returned under a new name this year, “Wine, Whiskey and Whatnot.” Chamber president Cori Williams said the one-day event held Saturday at Brent & Becky’s Bulbs went smoothly.

“Seems like everybody had a good time,” said Williams.

The chamber is still figuring how many people attended this year’s festival since there were so many tickets that were honored from last year’s festival.

The 2023 festival was planned as a two-day event but a tropical storm advisory encouraged the chamber to cancel the first day of the event, which was a Saturday. Saturday tickets were honored for Sunday last year. Saturday ticketholders who could not attend Sunday in 2023 were allowed to attend this year’s festival free of charge.

A ballpark estimate of attendees is planned to be available by the beginning of next week.

“The weather was pretty nice,” said Williams about this year’s festival. “It was a little hot.”

Free water was handed out during the festival to help with the heat. “Everyone had plenty of hydration,” said Williams.

Looking to next year, Williams would like to add more distilleries. This year’s event had nine wineries and two distilleries. She hopes to book four distilleries for next year’s festival.

Williams is grateful that the rain held off for this year and is “looking forward to next year, growing and expanding.”