Good vibes, good music rule at Paihia food and wine festival

The crowd applauds Fly My Pretties, headline act at Saturday's It! Bay of Islands Food and Wine Festival. Photo / Peter de Graaf

Sunshine, a near-capacity crowd, good vibes and a strong musical lineup combined to make one of the most successful It! Bay of Islands Food and Wine Festivals to date.

Saturday's event on Paihia Village Green was headlined by the 12-strong Wellington ''supergroup'' Fly My Pretties — led by Barnaby Weir of Black Seeds fame — with support from Kerikeri singer-songwriter Troy Kingi, fresh from making the finals of the Silver Scroll songwriting awards. Also playing were Northland band JPG and Automatic 80s, a 1980s-themed covers band who soon had festival-goers on their feet.

Image 1 of 27: Photo / Peter de Graaf

About 25 wineries, restaurants and boutique food producers offered Northland delicacies, while the extra-hungry competed in pie-eating, oyster-shucking and kina-sucking competitions.

Business Paihia events committee member Anika Whapshott said this year's event was notable for its ''awesome, chilled-out'' atmosphere.

Trouble has been rare at the family-friendly festival but the combination of sun and wine has usually proved too much for a few patrons.

On Saturday, however, organisers only dealt with two such cases instead of the usual 10 or so. Festival-goers who over-indulge are given shade, food and water and have their wristbands removed so they can't buy any more drinks.

This year was also the first time organisers had tried to create a zero-waste event with compostable food containers, recycle bins and pig buckets for food scraps.

Instead of disposable cups, festival-goers had to rent a reusable cup for $1 which they returned at the end of the day.

Refilling patrons' cups, instead of pre-filling new disposable cups each time, required new systems and more staff at the bar, but only caused delays for the first half-hour.

''It's a lot more work but it's worth it,'' Whapshott said.

Co-organiser Steph Godsiff said 1750 tickets were sold this year. At 26 per cent Whangārei residents made up the biggest group of festival-goers, with the rest of Northland and Auckland both on 24 per cent. The remaining 26 per cent came from various parts of New Zealand.

Godsiff said organisers were considering how to mark the festival's 10th anniversary next year. She encouraged anyone with requests or ideas to share them on the 'it' Bay of Islands Festival Facebook page.