Vintage Redlands 2014

On Friday May 2nd, community members walked the streets in downtown Redlands sampling different wines and local cuisines while raising scholarship funds for local university students from the University of Redlands and CSUSB. The Citrograph Foundation was established in 2002 to create a means by which to offer financial assistance to students pursuing careers in music, business, and graphic design. Vintage Redlands a wine and food event is one of the fundraising activities the foundation holds annually to help raise money. It is a walking tour pairing together downtown businesses and local restaurants, wineries, and caterers exposing the community to businesses they may not have known or took the time to investigate with this year’s event selling 260 tickets. Jennifer Dobbs is a member of the Board of Directors for the Citrograph Foundation and said, “The idea was to get people to come into downtown Redlands and to get them into local businesses and a way to do that was to have wine, beer, food and music and shop as they do that.” So far the foundation has given away $80,000 in scholarships and has built an endowment of $120,000. There were 13 different businesses for guests to travel to in the downtown Redlands area, the first stop was at the Ed Hales Park where guests checked in and received their wine glasses and goodie bags. From there patrons went to Redlands Galleria onwards to the Redlands Art Association, Redlands Jewelers, Security Bank of California and the last stop being J.D. Myers with several stores in between. Stephanie Carnes is the owner of Dream Dinners in Redlands and was serving chicken as people came through. She shared, “Our meals come in 3 and 6 and our aim is to keep families around the dinner table instead of going out. A member of the family comes and helps assemble the ingredients and then they get to take the frozen food home and can defrost it when they want to serve dinner.” Niza DiCarlo was inside mingling among the crowd at the comic book store, "A Shop Called Quest" and said, “I think it’s a perfect combination of letting your hair down on a Friday night and getting the chance to look at local businesses in the area that you might not have stopped at.” A La Minute was at "A Shop Called Quest" serving a sorbet made with 100% Moscato which patrons enjoyed, and DiCarlo said, “If you bring frozen wine to an event you pretty much have a success.” Guests enjoyed trying food from, The Gourmet Pizza Shoppe at Cabinet Factories Outlet, Cuca’s Mexican Food, and Muffin Top Bakery at the Alexis Victoria Salon & Spa. Near the end of the night, a couple was taking a break inside The Frugal Frigate Children’s bookstore and Marshall Elfstrand said, “It was a lot of fun, it was neat to see local places, it was a discovery of new places and there are some places we will go back too.”