80 Reasons You Can’t Miss the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, From Fireside Chats to a Caribbean Cookout

Whether it’s your first time or your 42nd, if you’re thinking about joining us at the 2025 Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, June 20-22, purchase one of the last remaining tickets available and use my guide below to plan your weekend. Build your schedule by signing up for some of the 80 cooking demonstrations, wine seminars, panel discussions, spirits tastings, and Grand Tastings.

Producing a Food & Wine Classic is like putting together a special issue of the magazine in real life. Magic happens when you bring some of the world’s most talented people together in beautiful spaces. Done right, it feels like an adult culinary summer camp in the Rocky Mountains — with lots of killer wine and dozens of surprise-and-delight moments over the course of a three-day event.

Here are some of the programs that our team has planned for Aspen that I’m really excited about:

First up, our Best New Chef Eras Dinner at the top of Aspen Mountain headlined by 1990 F&W Best New Chef Nancy Silverton and 2019 F&W Best New Chef Kwame Onwuachi, 2001 F&W Best New Chef Wylie Dufresne, 2015 F&W Best New Chef Katie Button.

Like many of you, I grew up watching Martin Yan on TV, and he is finally making his Classic debut, bringing his positive energy to the Aspen stage with a demo about The Joy of Noodles.

Phil Rosenthal will join Silverton to cook and talk about their upcoming L.A. diner Max + Helen’s, a project near and dear to our hearts. We’re also working on a screening of his upcoming Season 8 of his Netflix streamer Somebody Feed Phil.

F&W Executive Features Editor Kat Kinsman is leading a conversation series and live taping of our Tinfoil Swans podcast, which kicked off season 3 earlier this month, with guests like Padma Lakshmi of Taste the Nation and Ayesha Curry.

Who has the better palate, chefs or sommeliers? I’m putting $50 on the chefs for the  label-free tasting competition featuring 2022 F&W Best New Chef Justin Pichetrungsi of Anajak Thai and 2013 F&W Best New Chef Chris Shepherd facing off against two sommeliers. Pichetrungsi, a natural born teacher, is also leading a cooking demo called No Rules, No Limits: Thai Cooking My Way.

Be sure to come by a pop-up wine bar curated by F&W Special Projects Editor Lucy Simon and at the Grand Tasting Pavilion where we’ll feature snacks from some of our favorite chefs and hard-to-get wines, along with dishes from the magazine.

Want to learn how to be a better home cook? Start with Superpowered Pantry: Secret Ingredients for Dynamo Dinners, a demo taught by Tiffany Derry; Mex-Italian: Two Incredible World Cuisines Collide with Claudette Zepeda; or The Magic of Cooking with Turmeric with Maneet Chauhan. These are just three of the 20 cooking demos throughout the weekend.

With more than 50 specialized wine, cocktail, and beverage seminars, the drinks programming will feature a mix of old world and new world wines, beers, cocktails, sake, tequilas, and investing and collecting advice. June Rodil will be hosting The Future of Wine is Female and Monica Samuels will be hosting Sake vs. Wine: The Ultimate Showdown.

To cap things off, Gregory Gourdet is throwing a Caribbean Cookout at the top of Aspen Mountain celebrating the foodways and cocktails of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora with 2020 F&W Best New Chef Tavel Bristol-Joseph and 2024 F&W Best New Chef Camari Mick.

And our fellow F&W Pros with trade passes to the Classic, the American Express Trade Program is coming back with newly announced speakers, including Onwuachi, Andrew Zimmern, and Mashama Bailey.

I hope to raise a glass with you in Aspen! Tickets are available here.