People started lining up at 9 a.m. Saturday for the 22nd annual Leland Wine Food Festival.

The festival was scheduled to begin at noon at Marina Park at Leland Harbor, but with hundreds of people already waiting to get in, organizers opened the gates about 15 minutes early.

2007 Leland wine fest

“It was a gorgeous day and everything went really well,” said Cris Telgard, one of the event’s organizers. “As soon as we had all our volunteers ready to go, we started letting people in because we didn’t want people waiting too long to get in,” he said.

New to the festival this year was a local beer entry. Traverse Brewing Company had a ready supply of its Manitou Ale on hand. It must have been good, Telgard said, since the brewing company ran out of beer by 3 p.m.

“This was our first year offering a beer. It went really well and we are definitely going to do it again next year,” he said. Wine and food vendors had plenty of stock on hand to keep the estimated crowd of 4,300 entertained. Jazz guitarist Ron Getz performed from noon to 5:30 p.m. as well.

After last year’s record-setting attendance of 4,500, Telgard said the Leland

Michigan Chamber of Commerce, the event’s sponsor, decided to do minimal pre-event advertising.

“We were just about over capacity last year,” Telgard said.

The festival features wines and food from county restaurants and wineries. When it began in 1985, the festival drew on wineries all over the state. With the growth in wineries and vineyards throughout the county. the festival is now limited to Leelanau wineries.

Exact attendance numbers and the money-raising totals will not be known until later this week.

MUSICAL PERFORMANCES (above), a large crowd (left) and beautiful weather were part of the attractions at Saturday’s Leland Wine & Food Festival.