Then they start telling you about last year’s Festivale: the fresh Tasmanian oysters, the wine, the music they listened to under the trees for three days and nights of epicurean bliss.

Festivale is more than simply another food event. Firmly entwined with the history of City Park, one of Launceston’s most beloved public spaces, Festivale tells a 30-year story of Tasmania’s food and wine industry.

For Launcestonians, the event is the North’s answer to Taste of Tasmania, the week-long food celebration on Hobart’s waterfront.

It’s a place of community history, which is coming full circle. When it first began, Festivale was a small street party showcasing Tasmania’s multicultural foods – Italian, Greek and more.

Over the years, it grew to incorporate Tasmania’s burgeoning wine industry, moving to City Park in 1996.

Festivale chairwoman Lou Clark believes that having the event nestled in the green surrounds of City Park has given the food a unique and enduring persona.

“It’s grown its own identity, probably since it moved to the park it’s developed an identity of its own,” Ms Clark said.

Now, the diversity of multinational foods, craft beers and spirits, pop-up sweet treats and fresh-from-the-boat seafood hum together in a heady mix of opportunity.

Festivale is built on the principle of browsing – don’t go planning to have a single main meal with a glass of wine.

Take your time, consider the offerings of each stall carefully. A fresh, organic blueberry pancake or two here, a Tasmanian sangria there – a mouthful or two of slow-cooked pork, or a swirl of pinot gris from the North followed by a dash of cider from the South. 

Festivale’s homegrown roots are strong, with a strict rule that all food and drink must be of Tasmanian origin.

One of the original directors, Kaye Hurcum, spent 12 years on the volunteer committee, helping Festivale grow into a sophisticated national destination event.

“I saw it develop from being just a street festival into a really big do,” she said.

“The committee was all volunteers, and that’s what was so good about it – they were there to do the job, not for themselves,” Mrs Hurcum said.

“They all believed very much in Festivale.”

The festival isn’t just for consumers – it’s an annual meeting for food and drink producers from across the state to catch up with fellow producers, a chance to see and taste what others are creating.

Geoff Carr’s Hillwood Vineyard, on the Tamar River, has been one of the festival’s most dedicated supporters, attending for the past 21 years. 

As a viticulturist and winemaker, Mr Carr said Festivale’s presence was an invaluable bulwark to the growth of Tasmania’s renown boutique wine industry.

“It’s been fantastic for us, it really gives small winemakers and vineyards [the chance] to display their products,” he said.

“It certainly makes people aware of the size of the industry … I’m guessing there’s probably two to three hundred vineyards in Tasmania that produce grapes commercially, and I just don’t think people would be aware of their identity and their location.”

Festivale is not just a place for established producers, but a place for newcomers to try their wares, to make a name for themselves and shoulder in amongst the established icons.

From the newest stalls, such as Basque-inspired Mahasti Shellfish, who took out the award for Best Tasting Plate in 2016, to 136-year-old Launceston icon James Boag’s Brewery, there is a place and a taste for everyone. 

Boag’s marketing manager Malcolm Eadie sees Festivale as a place where the James Boag name, known as a craft beer on the mainland but a dominant force in Tasmania’s beer scene, best showcases its deep ties with Tasmanian history.

For more than 20 of Festivale’s 30 years, Boags has worked in partnership with the event, a grandfather to the state’s maturing craft beer scene.

“We’ve been brewing beers in Launceston since 1881, so partnering with someone else who has a long history of celebrating the great produce that comes from Tasmania, particularly Launceston, is important,” Mr Eadie said.

By exclusively celebrating the produce of Tasmania, Festivale has become not just a provincial gathering, but national drawcard.

Ms Clark said the event increasingly welcomes more mainland visitors, some of whom land in Launceston in February specifically to taste, try and savour the finest of Tasmania’s offerings.

Wine, cider and food awards are issued each year, a royal feather in the cap of any producer vying for recognition. 

Awards recognise stalls for environmental awareness, welcome new stalls, and celebrate cuisine creations that don’t quite fit into any other easily-recognisable category.

Master classes give the consumer a chance to own their food, partnering beer with cheese, explaining the close relationship between wine and matching wine glasses, and the finer details of crafting pinot noir in Tasmania.

This year the international flavour is making a return to Festivale, with Korean, Mexican, Himalayan dumplings, Turkish and Spanish cuisine rubbing shoulders with steak sandwiches, doughnuts and seafood.

For Tasmanians – and indeed the increasing number of mainlanders making a yearly pilgrimage – Festivale is more than just a food event, another place to eat.

It’s three days of laid-back culinary indulgence sheltered by City Park’s fine old oak trees: a tour of the state’s finest wines and beers, ciders and spirits, produce and multicultural delicacies without stirring a foot outside of Launceston.

And it’s a secret the rest of Australia is only just discovering.

See an interactive map of Festivale 2017 here.

Download the program here.