All-New Pumpkin Fest Preview Night Features Beer, Wine, Food Tasting

Enjoy food tasting and award-winning beer and wine on Friday, Sept. 30, at the all-new Cal Poly Pomona’s Pumpkin Fest Preview Night.

The university’s very own award-winning Innovation Brew Works and Horsehill Vineyards will provide beer and wine, respectively, at the Pumpkin Preview, while food truck vendors and local chefs will offer up country barbecue, desserts and other samples created from produce grown on the Cal Poly Pomona farm.

“Cal Poly Pomona is really unique in that we have a lot of opportunities on campus for great food and beverages,” said Craig Walters, the Pumpkin Fest director. “We’re focusing on including as much from the Cal Poly Pomona farm into that as we can.”

The Pumpkin Preview event will be held at the pumpkin patch from 5 to 8:30 p.m.; it is open to the public, however admission is restricted to adults 21 and over.

Tickets are $70 each and include the cost of food and beverage. They are for sale online only at https://pumpkinfestival.cpp.edu. 

Proceeds from the Pumpkin Preview will support Cal Poly Pomona’s Huntley College of Agriculture. Specifically, it will boost the college’s Dean’s Excellence Fund, which is used the agricultural program’s greatest needs.

“Preview Night is a chance for the public to see some of what we do as an agricultural program, training the next generation of leaders in the agricultural, food, nutritional health, animal health, and apparel industries,” said Martin Sancho-Madriz, the college’s interim dean. “We invite people to come and join us, enjoy good food and drink, and support us.”

Food and Activities

Innovation Brew Works is making six different types of beer for tasting for the Pumpkin Preview. It also is making root beer for root-beer floats.

Horsehill Vineyards will serve three different wines, including its newest vintage, a 2018 Zinfandel, to guests at the preview event. A special featured drink at the Pumpkin Preview is a sangria that combines Horsehill Vineyard wine with citrus fruit from the campus farm.

Innovation Brew Works is a professionally managed brewpub in Cal Poly Pomona’s Innovation Village that serves as a learn-by-doing brewing lab for the university.

Horsehill Vineyards is a collaborative project between South Coast Winery in Temecula and Cal Poly Pomona’s Huntley College of Agriculture and The Collins College of Hospitality Management that has won multiple awards, including a gold medal at the Los Angeles International Wine Competition.

Ag students help grow and harvest the grapes from on-campus vineyards, while hospitality students market and pour the wine at the Restaurant at Kellogg Ranch.

Food and drink aren’t the only activities that will be available at the Pumpkin Preview.

“People coming to the preview will get to experience 99 percent of what will happen during the Pumpkin Fest in October,” Walters said.

The evening will feature live music, the petting farm, hayrides, pumpkins, the sunflower maze, and Pumpkinland, a new feature this year that uses pumpkins artistically.

Pumpkin Fest in October

The month-long Cal Poly Pomona Pumpkin Fest will officially kick off on Saturday, Oct. 1, and run through Oct. 30.

It will feature all the traditional fun and activities that families have grown to love: the petting farm, corn maze, hayrides, costume contests, the Cow Train, Ag Discovery Lane, Sunflower Fields, antique farm tractors, food vendors, live music, and much more.

Tickets are available for sale online only at https://pumpkinfestival.cpp.edu.

Corporate sponsorships are available this year. For more information, contact Pamela A. Jones-Tintle, Cal Poly Pomona’s executive director of development, at (909) 869-2875 or pajones@cpp.edu.