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Stettler eats, drinks, and is merry at wine tasting

The Stettler Rotary Club held its fourth annual wine tasting at the community hall on Friday, April 25.
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Glen Ellingson shows off his wine at the fourth annual wine tasting at the Stettler community centre on Friday

The Stettler Rotary Club held its fourth annual wine tasting at the community hall on Friday, April 25.

“I went to a few wine tastings in different locations and I thought it would be a neat fundraiser for the community,” said Peter Boys, the fundraising director for the Stettler Rotary Club.

Five different businesses supplied wine and beer for the event, providing a variety of tastes for Stettler residents: from dessert wines to more acidic wines to fruit lagers.

One of the businesses was Fieldstone Fruit Wines. Owner Glen Ellingson, along with his partners, has been making wine from their own fruit since 2005 on a farm south of Strathmore.

“When you retire, you want to keep doing something that’s interesting,” he said. “It keeps us awfully busy.”

In addition to wine, the walls were lined with tables of food from businesses such as Love Sushi, Boston Pizza, Sobeys, and a host of others. There was sushi, vegetable platters, cupcakes, chocolate fondue, and more.

The organizers called wine sellers from around the area to see if they would be interested in showing off their wares at the event.

“It’s not actually hard to get people to come to this,” Boys said.

The event was intended to raise money for a variety of causes, but the main one was polio eradication.

Rotary has partnered with the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the US Center for Disease Control to eradicate polio globally.

The money raised at the wine tasting event also goes to various initiatives around Stettler (the library, the handi-bus, the community hall, the skate park, and more), a women’s shelter in Camrose, and buying mosquito nets for people in Africa to help prevent polio.

The Rotary Club sold 250 tickets, which, Boys said, is very good for Stettler. He hopes to have raised at least $6,500 from the event.