All Hogs go to heaven. How do I know that? Bacon. Those fried nuggets of pork goodness that only can be described as heaven. This year, Baconfest was celebrated on an unusually cold yet gloriously beautiful day at the end of March. Bacon was sorely needed to take the edge off of the chilly day. The festival delivered with fun filled, light hearted games, several types of music including a full band all dolled up in bacon gear, a silent auction with tons of swag, and of course bacon. You had me at bacon, right?

Of the fun filled games, the first stop was the Hobo Wine Tasting. Night Train, Cisco, Wild Irish Rose. Three words and wines I never thought I would try or be in the same sentence for that matter. According to the wine tasting sommelier, the Night Train wine was a good year when the light was on in the picture on the bottle, a bad year when off. I laughed a little and said, “It was a good year.” That was the best of the three awful wines tasted and that’s saying a lot. There was also Cisco that was a spring varietal that we only gets produced with the right grapes for spring. So wrong. It tasted like cough syrup. The girl next to me literally spit it out. Wild Irish Rose was the worst of the bunch, which they told me was named after Richardson’s son that he didn’t like very much, hence the name “Wild Irish Rose”. It was a whole bunch of fun to hear kooky stories about some nasty wine I’ll never have again. Cheers!

The other shenanigans included a very popular flip cup tournament that was never dull on hilarity and flipping cups. They also had the Baconatrix again this year. Heard at Baconfest alert! We were walking by and a wise young lady said about the Baconatrix, “its 50 shades of Bacon.” Seriously? Sigh. There was also Terrible Caricatures that were really, really bad. I don’t even draw that bad.  One of the gentlemen got is picture and laughed for about 5 minutes before pitching it in the trash. The GA Renaissance Festival had a small tent but enthralled the crowd with the stock. People would pose in the stock with a sign beneath them that either said sober, drunk, or moron. Which would you choose? Further down, there was Human Foosball were they tether you to a bouncy house and you play actual life-size foosball.  It was pretty interesting. I wonder what the liability on that is with drunk people and physical sports. Hm. Beyond that, there was Dr. Boobies who guessed anyone’s cup size. Do you know how many men were showing their man boobs? Next to that pepole were getting their faces painted with anything from bacon to penises. That’s a wide variety of painting to master if you think about it. So many fun things, so little time. We conquered them all except Shut the Box, which looked REALLY fun. It was really interesting to watch. I never saw anyone win. Did you?

This year, Baconfest, introduced the first annual Bacon Smackdown. The participants were Barcelona, Corner Tavern, Bone Lick, Folk Art, and West Egg. The lines were pretty long so I only got to try Barcelona’s pork belly and Corner Tavern’s Bacon Chorizo Chili. The pork belly was delicious with cherry glaze, the right amount of sweet with the salt of the pork. It was tender and hit the spot early in the day. As for the chili from Corner Tavern, it had bacon jerky pieces in a spicy, chili sauce. I’ve never had bacon jerky in chili before. Yum. They were both very, very good but I’d have to go with the Pork Belly as the winner of the two. It was the salty sweet contrast that did it for me. The masses disagreed as they named Corner Tavern the winner of the Smackdown. Congrats! One thing of note for Corner Tavern: the Little Five Points location is back open! They had a grand re-opening on Monday, March 30th! Welcome, back!

And with that, Baconfest 2015 comes to a close with bacon in our hearts and a lingering bacon smell in our hair and on our clothes. Until next year…