Bacchus on the Beach celebrates ninth year

Attendees seemed reluctant to leave as the event wound down.

By Nat Kaemmerer
| 7:10 p.m. November 8, 2019

Longboat Key
Neighbors

Bacchus on the Beach, the Longboat Key Club’s ninth annual celebration of food and wine, ended with a mountain of stone crab and dancing in the sand.

On Friday, Nov. 8, a few hundred people gathered on the beachfront at the resort to indulge in stone crab, shrimp, wine and other delicacies. Twinkling lights glimmered along the massive tent on the beach where all the food and drink was served. Buckets caught the drip from the ever-refilled ice mountain where the crab and shrimp were waiting to be eaten.

“We come from North Carolina for this,” Sheryl Bryan said. “This is our second year, and we come with some really good friends.”

This year’s event was to benefit the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus’ College of Hospitality and Tourism Leadership students, who got hands-on experience hosting the event. Proceeds from an auction, where bottles of wine along with a dinner experience went for $900, went to the college as well.