Food and drink events in South Australia
03 NOV 2025
You know you’ve arrived in South Australia when that first pour lands in your glass, as someone tells you to ‘sit, stay, please eat!’.
That’s how it starts – one small act of hospitality. What we grow, we share. What we make, we make with heart. Across our state, from red dirt to coastline, you’ll find that same generous hospitality wherever food and drink bring people together. Discover a life well-fed with the best food and drink events in South Australia.
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Tasting Australia, State-wide - May
Pull up a seat and pour yourself a glass half full. At Tasting Australia, you’re welcomed into the kitchen and the stories behind every plate. For more than two decades, this celebration of food and drink has brought together the people who grow it, make it and love it most. Across long tables in city streets and regional kitchens, the state’s best chefs, producers and storytellers come together to share what makes South Australia taste like nowhere else. You'll leave feeling full of food, stories and moments you’ll talk about long after the plates are cleared.
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Clare Valley Gourmet Week - May
Each May, Clare Valley Gourmet Week turns the valley into one long lunch. One of Australia’s oldest wine regions, Clare Valley knows that good things take time, whether it’s riesling in the bottle or a story spilled out between courses.
Glasses clink as you hop off the bus and into your next tasting. Bread is torn, wine is poured and chairs shuffle closer as new friends join the table. Between courses, there’s time to wander past stone walls and through cellar doors. Ten days of wine, food and easy company, with every detail taken care of - right down to the view.
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Gutsy Kangaroo Island - June
The cold might bite, but Kangaroo Island bites back. In June, when the seas are rough and the air smells of salt and smoke, the Island’s boldest producers step out into the elements for Gutsy Kangaroo Island: pouring, plating and passing around what they’ve made. The island isn’t an easy place to grow or make, with salt-laden winds and tough, sandy soils making every harvest hard-won. But that’s what makes it so special. Everything here – from the gin to the honey to the lamb – carries a little grit. Warm your bones over feasts worth braving the weather for.
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Winter Reds, Adelaide Hills - July
When Winter Reds rolls around, the Hills shake off the cold and come alive. Fires crackle, boots crunch across gravel and cellar doors rattle with music. Outside, the vines are bare; inside, it’s all warm roasts and reds.
You drift between venues – some with DJs and fire pits, others with long tables and food that tastes like Sunday lunch cooked by your mum. By the time the weekend’s over, your coat smells like smoke, your cheeks are flushed and you’re full of fresh energy to carry you through the season.
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Fleurieu Food Festival - August
The Fleurieu Food Festival brings together everything this region does best: coast and countryside, growers and makers, fine dining and fish and chips. Across the peninsula, land and sea fold into each other in ways that don’t need explaining; you can taste it in every glass and bite. Wander through olive groves, sip red wine by a glowing fire or learn the secrets of sourdough fermentation and seasonal cooking. It’s a good excuse to drink well, eat even better and learn the lessons of a life well-fed.
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Grenache and Gourmet, Fleurieu Peninsula - September
McLaren Vale wears its heart on its sleeve, and that heart is Grenache. Fed by sea air and shaped by a mix of sandy and ironstone soils, the region produces wines with bright red fruit, gentle tannins and a generosity that mirrors their makers. Each year, cellar doors and local kitchens open wide for Grenache and Gourmet, celebrating the people and stories behind every pour. You can taste the region’s hospitality in every glass.
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Clare Valley Festival of the Lamb - September
Spring in the Clare Valley means green hills, full pastures and lamb on the menu – fresh from the same farms that shape the region’s patchwork of vines. Every year, local farmers, butchers and chefs come together to celebrate spring lamb from paddock to plate. Enjoy it cooked every way you can imagine: over coals, in country pubs and on long tables set between the vines. Add Clare’s crisp riesling and that easy country hospitality, and you’ve got the makings of a very good weekend.
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CheeseFest, Adelaide - October
In Rundle Park/Kadlitpina, the air smells like melted cheese and warm bread. Stallholders slice and stack, offering wedges of brie and bites of blue, while nearby winemakers pour their latest drop. On the lawns, friends sink into picnic rugs as live music drifts through the trees and the afternoon light flickers across their glasses. As the sun dips and the bottles empty, you realise you’ve spent the whole afternoon talking to strangers who now feel like friends.
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OysterFest Ceduna, Eyre Peninsula - October
Ceduna wears its title as the Oyster Capital of Australia well. The waters of Murat Bay are calm and clean, fed by cold Southern Ocean currents that make for slow-growing oysters: plump, briny and sweet. Every October long weekend, the town celebrates them the only way it knows how – by gathering on the foreshore with shuckers, smokers and seafood lovers from across the state.
There are cooking demos, local food stalls and music rolling across the sand. Stay for the sunset and that far West Coast sense of space that you won’t find anywhere else.
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Coonawarra Cabernet Celebrations, Limestone Coast - October
October is cabernet season in Coonawarra, when the region’s famous red-dirt strip hums with tastings and good-natured debate about whose vintage came out best. The secret’s in that terra rossa soil: rich, iron-stained earth that holds warmth by day and cools fast at night, giving the wine its depth and that unmistakable hint of spice.
Over a few weekends, winemakers open their cellars and pull special bottles from the rack, pouring them alongside stories of weather and harvests. Whether it’s a masterclass or a quiet pour between the vines, this is cabernet country – and best enjoyed on its home turf.
There's always something happening somewhere in South Australia.
A feast, a festival, a reason to stay a little longer. See what’s coming up across the state in our events and festivals calendar.
