Preview Week is the official summer series of the Fredericksburg Food and Wine Festival. It is a set of small, ticketed events held each July that give guests early access to the chefs, winemakers, and producers who define food and wine in the Texas Hill Country. Where the fall Grand Tasting gathers thousands of people in one place, Preview Week does the opposite. It spreads a handful of evening events across town, each one built around a single venue, a single table, or a single idea.

If you have been to the festival in October and wondered what happens the rest of the year, Preview Week is a good place to start.

Preview Week Anchors the Festival’s Summer Season

The Fredericksburg Food and Wine Festival is not a single weekend. It runs as three seasonal series, and each one plays a different role.

• Restaurant Week in the spring highlights local restaurants with special menus and chef collaborations across town.
• Preview Week in the summer offers curated dinners, tastings, and pairings in unique venues, on a smaller and more personal scale.
• Festival Weekend in the fall is the flagship celebration, with opening night, a street dinner, the Grand Tasting pavilion at Marktplatz, and a Sunday brunch.

This structure keeps the Hill Country’s food and wine community active through most of the year rather than concentrating everything into one weekend. Preview Week is the summer chapter of that story, and it works as both a standalone experience and a first taste of what the fall festival delivers at full scale.

Preview Week Fills Six Days With Seven Dinners, Tastings, and Pairings

Preview Week is built around variety. No two evenings are alike, and most are limited to a small number of guests, which is part of the appeal. The 2026 series, held July 20 through 25, gives a good picture of the range:

• The White Party opened the week at Calivence Wine Tasting Bar and Bistro: a garden reception with live music followed by a four-course plated dinner and wine pairing, limited to a small group of guests.
• Women for WineSense at Hoffman Haus offered an educational evening for wine lovers of every experience level.
• Cultured at The Yellow Door Studio blended wine education with hands-on creativity.
• Bangers and Brews at Altstadt Brewery turned to Hill Country beer, with food and stand-up comedy.
• Wild and Rooted at Signor Vineyards brought guests outdoors for a garden party featuring wild boar dishes paired with wines.
• Boozy Brunch at Casa Chloe closed the week with elevated Mexican brunch fare, and
• The Quesoff crowned the best queso in town in a family-friendly community competition.

The lineup changes each year, but the format stays the same: a mix of refined dinners, relaxed gatherings, and a few events built for families. For the coming year’s schedule and tickets, sign up for our newsletter.

Intimate Dinners Deepen the Texas Wine Experience

A large tasting is about breadth. You move from table to table and sample as widely as you can. A Preview Week dinner is about depth. You sit with the winemakers, work across meals and events, and you hear the reasoning behind each pour.

That is the value of the preview events. The format pairs a set menu with wines chosen to match each course, and it puts the people who made the wine in the same space with the people drinking it. Guests learn how a wine was grown and made, why it belongs with a particular dish, and what the maker was trying to achieve. For anyone who wants to understand Texas wine rather than simply taste it, a curated dinner or pairing does more than a crowded tasting can.

The limited capacity is designed on purpose. Smaller events like Preview Week make conversation and education possible with both the people behind the wine and food as well as meeting other guests who enjoy Texas Hill Country fare.

The Hill Country Produces Award-Winning Texas Wine

Preview Week works because of what surrounds it. Fredericksburg sits at the center of the Texas Hill Country, the largest American Viticultural Area in the state, and the region has become one of the fastest-growing wine areas in the country. Nearly 80 wineries now operate in Gillespie County alone, with a growing number of tasting rooms along the US-290 corridor.

The quality is drawing notice well beyond Texas. In 2026, four Hill Country wineries earned gold medals at the Decanter World Wine Awards, one of the largest international wine competitions in the world, a first for the region. As Jim Mikula, president and CEO of the Fredericksburg Chamber of Commerce, put it in a CBS Austin interview during Preview Week, “Recently, in London at the biggest wine competition in the world, four of our wineries in the Hill Country earned gold medals for the first time ever.”

Preview Week gives that growing reputation a stage. The chefs, brewers, and winemakers featured across the week are the same people building the Hill Country’s standing as a culinary destination, and the summer series is where visitors meet them directly.

Local and Trade Media Cover Preview Week

Preview Week has drawn steady local and regional coverage, which speaks to how the summer series has grown from a soft launch into a destination in its own right.

• CBS Austin covered the 2026 week in its local news segment, Preview Week gives Fredericksburg visitors an early taste of Food and Wine Festival.
• CBS Austin’s We Are Austin also featured the series in A Taste of the Texas Hill Country at Fredericksburg Food and Wine Preview Week.
• Trade outlets including Wine Industry Advisor and Texas Wine Lover reported on the 2026 lineup and ticket release.

The Chamber Foundation Directs Proceeds to Community Programs

The Fredericksburg Food and Wine Festival is produced by the Fredericksburg Chamber of Commerce Events Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that continues producing the festival that was first held over 30 years ago. That structure means proceeds support the community rather than private profit. Preview Week is part of that mission, connecting visitors to local businesses while raising funds that stay in the region.

Those funds back local programs. The foundation supports the Hospitality Worker Emergency Fund, which provides emergency assistance to Gillespie County hospitality workers through a partnership with the Southern Smoke Foundation, and the Fredericksburg High School Culinary Program Fund, which helps train the next generation of local culinary talent. Festival proceeds help fund that work. You can learn more or contribute on the festival’s donate page.

Festival Weekend Follows Preview Week in October

Preview Week is the summer stop on a year-round celebration of Hill Country food and wine. If it has your attention, here is where the festival goes next:

• Festival Weekend returns October 22 through 25, 2026, with opening night, the street dinner, the Grand Tasting at Marktplatz, and Sunday brunch. This is the full-scale event, and tickets are available now.
• Preview Week comes back every July for another summer series of dinners, tastings, and pairings. Watch the festival calendar and social channels for the lineup and ticket release.
• Restaurant Week opens the year each spring, with participating restaurants across Fredericksburg.

For dates, tickets, and the full schedule across all three series, visit fbgfoodandwine.com and subscribe to the newsletter for announcements.