BREMERTON – There was no shortage of blackberry-themed food at the 26th annual Blackberry Festival at the Bremerton boardwalk this weekend: “Berry good” blackberry pie, pastries with blackberry filling called “blackberry slugs,” blackberry-flavored kettle corn, blackberry shortcake and blackberry wine were just a few of the delicacies on offer to the 25,000 or so people estimated to have attended.
Festival goer Kathleen Juhl, of Lynwood, sampled a small plastic cup of blackberry wine at one booth.
“It’s good … to me it’s kind of tart,” Juhl said.
Pasek Cellars, of Mount Vernon, makes some 3,500 cases of blackberry wine annually – 12 bottles of wine per case. They make two varieties: a wine, and a port. The port is fortified with brandy.
“It’s sweeter. More alcohol, more fruit intensity,” said winery operator David James of the port.
“The liquor laws don’t let you call it port but it’s made like a port from blackberries. This is the third year we’ve had this particular wine here at the festival,” James said. The port is 16 percent alcohol; the wine is 11 percent.
For those not interested in all the berry fare, there were other fine cuisine choices such as deep-fried Twinkies and phad thai noodles.
According to fair organizers, the weather cooperated – mostly – this year. The weather was sunny Saturday and Monday, but was a bit rainy Sunday.
Organizers Chuck Henderson and Bill Drollinger said vendors reported record “gangbuster” days on Saturday, with crowds packing the festival grounds tighter than I-5 during rush hour.
Carol Atkinson, executive director for the festival, said no one kept track of how many people attended the free event, but she guessed 25,000-50,000 people might have attended the three-day event.
“We’ve been through all kinds of weather in all these years. We’ve had beautiful days. Sometimes it’s hotter than heck and we’ve had people passing out because of the heat.” At other times, tent booths have been blown over by the wind.
“This year we have about 138 booths,” she added.
For the past three years the Bremerton Rotary Foundation has been running the festival.
Atkinson said that she and Paulette Mentor first started the festival in 1990. At the time, Atkinson was executive director for the Bremerton Main Street Association. Mentor came up to her one day and suggested she start a festival.
“And she said, ‘Let’s call it the blackberry festival because I’m from Sacramento and there’s no blackberries there but you can’t get rid of them here,’” Atkinson recalled.
Atkinson did a bit of research and learned that Labor Day weekend was the best time of year for blackberries.
“But everybody told me don’t do a festival on Labor Day weekend because that’s Bumbershoot and nobody will come.” Undeterred, Atkinson went with Labor Day weekend. They planned to hold the first Blackberry Festival at the Bremerton Boardwalk, but the boardwalk wasn’t completed in time for the first festival.
“So we put it on Fourth Street between Pacific and Washington and we had probably, maybe, 30 booths there the first year. And everybody sold out of everything. All the people that had food had to go to the stores and get some food. We had about 2,000 people there,” Atkinson said.
“The next year we thought the boardwalk would be done. It wasn’t done. So we had it again on Fourth Street and we had about 4,000 people come and then the next year the boardwalk was done so we put it on the boardwalk and it’s been expanding ever since.”
