Taste of Vail, Smithsonian
ink marketing partnership

Publishing giant takes charitable
festival to a broader audience

VAIL, Colo. (Feb. 3, 2007) — America’s premier wine and culinary
festival is joining forces with a cultural and media icon.

Organizers of Taste of Vail, celebrating its 17th year April 11-14,
announce a new partnership with Smithsonian magazine, which delivers
top-quality editorial focusing on history, science, travel and the arts
to a highly affluent audience of more than two million people.

“It’s a good fit. Smithsonian is about the substance and soul of a
location, and the food and wine aspect is as significant as anything
else,” says TJ Armstrong, a founding member of Taste of Vail’s board of
directors. “Readers of Smithsonian magazine are adventuresome and
inquisitive people with enough discretionary income to indulge all
that. This is a great opportunity to show them what we’ve got here in
the Vail Valley.”

Smithsonian magazine is a monthly magazine reaching 6.9 million
cultural enthusiasts with diverse interests in the arts, history,
sciences and popular culture of the times. Each subscription includes a
complimentary membership to the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s
largest museum complex and research organization composed of 17 museums
and the National Zoo in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, and
two museums in New York City.

Taste of Vail, meanwhile, celebrates the rich lifestyle, fine dining,
prestigious art galleries, fashionable shops and phenomenal skiing that
have made the Vail Valley a world-class, year-round resort. The
festival was created in 1990 by a group of local restaurateurs as a
marketing event to showcase the resort’s world-class restaurants. Now
the internationally famous destination boasts more than 21 Wine
Spectator award-winning restaurants, the most of any resort community
in the United States. Many of them are among the nearly three-dozen
Vail Valley restaurants that participate in Taste of Vail every year.

Such high standards over the years have led to the Taste of Vail’s
being ranked as one of the top three arts-and-entertainment events in
the United States, in terms of quality, by the 2006 Luxury Brand Status
Index events, conducted by the New York-based Luxury Institute
(www.luxuryinstitute.com).

Taste of Vail also is a charitable nonprofit organization. Since its
inception, the festival has contributed more than $330,000 to Vail
Valley charities; and in 2005, in conjunction with Ritz-Carlton, the
Taste of Vail donated $23,000 to the Hurricane Katrina relief fund.

“Partnering with Smithsonian magazine potentially means not only a
significant increase in cash to improve Taste of Vail as an event, but
to boost the bottom line,” says Armstrong. “This is a fantastic
opportunity to utilize national exposure to benefit Vail Valley
charities.”

“This partnership will elevate Taste of Vail to an even more unique and
memorable experience, reaching a broader audience,” says Rosie Walker,
Smithsonian Publishing’s director of marketing. “As North America’s No.
1 ski resort, Vail is frequented by CEOs and movers and shakers in
business and industry — affluent, influential culture-seekers who
partake in cultural events worldwide … just like the Smithsonian
reader.”

The 17th annual Taste of Vail will feature perhaps the finest and most
diverse selection of participating wineries to date, tapping a
preliminary list of 54 wine producers from around the world to pour the
best they have to offer. Wineries from France, Spain, New Zealand,
Australia and Italy join a large contingent from Oregon and, of course,
the Napa Valley, Sonoma County and the central coast of California.

For more information, or to buy tickets, visit www.tasteofvail.com,
e-mail info@tasteofvail.com or call 970-926-5665.

# # #

Media contact:
Stephen Lloyd Wood, media liaison
  (970) 949-9774
press@tasteofvail.com
www.tasteofvail.com

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