The Rotary Club of El Paso will kick off the fifth annual El Paso Wine Festival this Saturday at the Keystone Botanical Gardens.

The festival will feature over 300 different wines from over 40 different wineries from all over the world as well as food from 18 local restaurants. Beer from Ode Brewing Co. will also be featured at the festival.

“The whole purpose of this event is to try and educate the people of El Paso about good wines,” said President of the Rotary Club of El Paso Mike Hackett.  “It’s really supposed to be an educational experience.”

Hackett believes that this event will give people the opportunity to acquire a taste for wine and learn how to pair it with their food.

“As you drink more wines you acquire a taste for it. It’s kind of like coffee or tea,” Hackett said. “What you eat with what you drink really changes the dynamics and the flavor of the wine. Everyone’s palate is different, so what you like I might not.”

The Rotary is an international non-profit organization that has been around for over a century and has more than 30,000 clubs all over the world. The Rotary Club of El Paso, was founded in 1914, and is just one of the six rotary clubs in El Paso.

All the proceeds will stay in El Paso and help fund other projects the Rotary Club of El Paso put on and manage. The RotaCare Clinic, a free health care clinic located on the East side, is just one of the many projects that receives some of the festival’s funds.

The Rotary Club of El Paso will also hold a reserve tasting on Thursday, Oct. 12 for their “gracious” sponsors such as The Hospitals of Providence, iHeart Media, and L&F Distributors.

Rotaract at UTEP, a club based of Rotary focused on leadership and community service, will be volunteering at the festival.

Tickets are $100 and are available for purchase at the gate, on the El Paso Wine Festival website elpasowinefest.com or Facebook page @elpasowinefest.

Free Uber and taxi rides will also be available for festival goers. “We just want everybody to have a good time and enjoy themselves,” Hackett said.

The festival will be on Saturday Oct. 14 from 1 p.m.-4 p.m. at the Keystone Botanic Gardens at 4200 Doniphan Dr.