Hear ye, hear ye, winos of North Texas! April 5-6 was the opening weekend for our own Renaissance festival, Scarborough Faire in Waxahachie, Texas. The Wine Fairy was there, tasting (almost) all the wines so I could report back to you. (Aye…’tis a tough job.)
Scarborough Faire (a.k.a. Scarborough Renaissance Festival) has more than 15 pubs, all with different levels of service and different drink offerings. In this article, I’m dishing out all the wine-centric details I discovered at Scarbie at the start of the 2025 season. That includes prices, festival rules, which tavern you just have to go to and which ones you’d be better off avoiding.
A little introduction: Like a lot of DFW locals, I’ve been going to Scarborough Faire on field trips and family outings for approximately forever. Since way before I was old enough to hold a crayon, much less a wine glass. I never worked out there, but during my fantasy modeling days you might have seen me flitting around in fairy wings.
Now, I write the The Wine Fairy blog, which covers all manner of wine topics with a special focus on Texas wine/mead and Texas travel. This is an unofficial, highly opinionated fan guide to the Faire. (I’m not affiliated with the good folks at Scarborough Renaissance Festival.) I recommend checking their website for the most recent details including hours and policies.
A toast, a toast! Let’s raise a tankard to the health of the Realm! Our fondest wish is that you’ll find this info useful when you’ve arrived at the village gates with a need for mead.
I Hope Ye Like Box Wine?
First, the bad news: Scarborough has a house red and a house white, and they are from a cardboard box. Many of the smaller pubs I wandered into only had two grape wines available: Bota Cabernet Sauvignon and Bota Chardonnay. (There’s also a “Champagne” listed on some menus but I didn’t catch the brand. I’ll bet you a shilling it’s not really Champagne from across the Channel, though.)
I’m no wine snob, but “the red box or the white box” is a discouraging wine list. Even worse, some establishments just had the cardboard-covered wine bladders sitting out on the counter, like you would see in a college apartment or a startup’s office break room. (I’m looking at you, Dirty Duck.)
It’s not that Bota Box wines are terrible. I’ve had them, and they don’t taste bad at all. And yes, I know boxed wines are more eco-friendly and last longer once opened and all of that. So don’t @ me.
It’s just that…well, a 3-liter Bota Box retails for about $16 in my area. At 20 5-ounce pours per box, that’s roughly 80 cents per glass. The same wine at a Scarbie pub is $9, not including tax and tip. That’s not, like, stadium pricing–but it’s not spare change, either.
The Faire generally makes a very good effort to cover up electronics and branded packaging to make you feel as if you’ve stepped out of the present-day world and into a 16th-century English market town. Would it be so hard to preserve the illusion that I’m not buying a plastic cup of box wine at a 1000% markup?
Finding the Good Grapes
If box wine doesn’t tickle your tastebuds, just keep walking. There are a few pubs with better wines on the list. All of the still wines at Scarbie are priced at $9–same as the box wine–so you might as well walk a little further and have a few more choices.
The best of these is the Cat & Fiddle tavern all the way at the back of the fairgrounds, near the Joust Arena. This is the pub that hosts the twice-daily wine tastings (more on that later).
On the day I visited, the Cat & Fiddle was pouring a sparkling wine, a sweet Moscato, the Ferrari-Carano Fumé Blanc, and the Alexander Valley Vineyards Chardonnay. There was just one red, the Rebellious Red (a heavy, Zinfandel-inflected California blend). On Sundays, they can mix you a mimosa, too.
Cat & Fiddle also has a of couple interesting craft beers. (We shared a Left Hand Peanut Butter Stout–the perfect combo of malty, salty, and sweet.) Several of the bars have a unique beer, chosen by Seamus Norwood, Certified Cicerone. These “Seamus’s Choice” beers are scattered throughout the festival grounds, and each one is available at only one pub. Think of it as a fun beer scavenger hunt!
Are you an out-of-towner looking to try an authentic, regional beverage? North Texas is the birthplace of the frozen margarita, and you can get those at many food stands at Scarbie. Frozen bellinis, too.
What does that have to do with wine, you ask? As a side effect of Texas’s bizarre liquor laws, most concessionaires have to make their margaritas with wine rather than liquor. The wine-a-rita is an odd cocktail–a child of innovation and constraint. Still, it’s a quintessentially Texan refreshment and can hit the spot on a sunny day.
Oh Honey! There Is Also Mead
In keeping with the Renaissance theme, many of the bars at Scarborough Faire also offer mead. This niche beverage is made from fermented honey and may be flavored with fruit or spices. Many festival-goers enjoy it as a novel alternative to beer and wine.
The new-for-2025 mead provider is Nidhoggr Mead Co., of York, United Kingdom. Scarbie has three flavors: Traditional, Sour Cherry, and Elderflower. They’re poured straight from the bottle and priced at $12 a glass.
The Traditional Mead was good–medium-sweet, with musky wild honey flavors and a bit of orange and spice. The Sour Cherry was exactly what it sounds like. You know if you enjoy that kind of drink or not. I didn’t get a chance to try the Elderflower Mead–I can only drink so much honey booze before I start to vibrate like a hummingbird–but Elderflower is one of my favorite flavors. (Next time!)
Nidhoggr Meads have higher alcohol (15-17%) than most mead offerings, and the pours at Scarbie are very small. They’re quite sugary tasting, too. The alcohol strength and the sweetness could be a plus or a minus, depending on what you like from your mead.
I personally prefer the mead offerings from Breaking Brew Meadery. Their meads are sessionable in style (under 8%) and locally made in DFW. Some are lightly fizzy, so they’re only available at bars with mead taps installed. That would be the Cat & Fiddle, Alehouse Pub, Hogshead Pub, King’s Pub, Dirty Duck Pub, and Capt’ns Pub.
Daily Wine Tastings
Scarborough offers wine tastings twice a day at 1 PM and 3 PM. This is a ticketed event (additional cost, apart from the festival entrance fee). The price is $35 in advance, or $40 the day of festival. You get a wine flight (about 6 sample-size pours), a little box of a nibbles, and a presentation from a Certified Sommelier in sailor garb, Flynn Markley.
Wine tasting themes rotate across each of the festival’s eight weekends, and feature topics like Wines of Italy, Wines of the New World, and Flynn’s Favorites. Check the schedule for what’s coming up next! For beer nerds, there’s a similar beer tasting event at the Village Green at noon and 3 PM.
On good weather days, all the beer and wine tastings tend to sell out. But don’t despair! Mosey on over to Cat & Fiddle and check for tickets, because they sometimes have a few more spots available after online sales have ended.
Other Scarbie Drinking Tips from the Wine Fairy
The drinking age at Scarborough Faire is strictly 21. They are serious about enforcing it and His Majesty’s sheriffs (the cops) are everywhere. Carry your state-issued ID with you. The Wine Fairy is nowhere near under-21 and I got carded twice this past weekend (maybe because I am only like 2 in fairy years).
You can only order two drinks at a time, and they’re also strict about that. So no standing in line to buy a round for your friends who are sitting down and eating their food and watching all the costume stuff that you’re tired of carrying around. That two-drink rule means no wine by the bottle, either–which is kind of a bummer for groups.
You cannot bring in your own beverages–except for one bottled water–but you can get your hand stamped for re-entry. So it makes sense to plan to go back to your car once or twice a day to “hydrate.”
On that note, actually do hydrate. It can get really hot at Faire, especially toward the end of the season. I recommend stopping frequently to drink liquids (that aren’t wine) so you don’t end up passed out on a bench.
Friends of Faire season passholders get access to a small fenced-in seating area with water and Gatorade. There are drinking fountains scattered around, mostly by the privies. Otherwise, you have to buy bottled water or go outside the gates. (I’m guessing they probably have water in the medical pavilion…but I wouldn’t want to test that theory.)
Most food and beverage vendors at Scarborough are now cashless. Still, I recommend carrying some small bills to tip the hardworking barfolk. Having some fives and ones also means you can tip what you want on a couple of beers, and dodge the aggressive “20%-25%-30%”-style tablet that they now spin around in your face at every transaction.
Spirits drinkers: There is only one bar with a liquor license (as opposed to just beer and wine). That would be the Rose & Crown Inn, which is also the only “full-service” restaurant. However, I’ve been going to Scarbie for decades and I never recommend this place. The food has always been meh and the staff is rude. To give a very recent, very specific example: The management are greedy jerks who will not let you sit at any of their tables even if it’s 10:15 in the morning and the place is completely empty and you just paid $30 including tip for two tiny cups of mead from their stupid bar so you can get out of the wind for ten minutes while your friend waits in the coffee line next door. Some stuff never changes. Rose & Crown is still a trap. Keep strolling.
But that’s enough negativity. Now, how about that all-important Renaissance fair question: What kind of wine pairs with turkey legs?
Lighter reds like Pinot Noir and Beaujolais are Thanksgiving Day classics, but Scarborough doesn’t have any of those. Fortunately, almost anything goes with smoked turkey. A dry red wine like the The Bota Cab will complement the turkey leg’s fatty, crispy skin and savory wood-smoke notes. Should you opt for the Bota Chardonnay, its subtle oakiness and fruity apple flavors will make for an equally delicious pairing.
Scarbie Wines: Faire to Middling?
I don’t think the beverage program at Scarbie is especially strong compared to some other Ren fairs I’ve been to. The wine tasting event is a big draw, but it’s also a big commitment of time when there are so many things to see and do in the afternoon. The wine tent is strictly 21+, so it’s not an option for families with small kids in tow. At up to $40 a person plus tax and gratuities, it’s also rather expensive–more than the cost of the fair ticket itself. Still, it’s worth doing at least once if you’re a wine beginner and you have deep pockets.
My wife and I had done the wine tasting before, and we had a non-wine drinker in our group this past Sunday. So we opted to construct our own wine tour of the bars and taverns. It took a little searching, but we eventually found two chilled Sonoma whites that tasted good and offered a good value. The wine staff and bartenders at Cat & Fiddle had everything in stock and knew their stuff. There’s often live acoustic music to tap your toes to while you sip.
Suggestions for the Faire? I would love to see the Bota Boxes hidden away and more dry, local, and red wines on offer. And rosé. (Is rosé over? Stop the trend cycle–I still like rosé!)
As a value-conscious drinker, I also prefer to buy wine by the bottle and share with friends. That’s how we do it when we travel to Houston’s Texas Renaissance Festival–but I understand there are good reasons to limit alcohol purchases to single servings.
Speaking of which, I’m glad to see that Scarbie is taking safety seriously. They are doing an admirable job of preventing people from getting absolutely trashed or providing alcohol to minors. I didn’t see any drunken misbehavior, and the mood at the end-of-day Pub Sing was jolly, not sloppy.
Despite some chilly weather–and one moment of surly service–we had a delightful day at Faire. Whether you’re drinking box wine or something more regal, I hope you enjoy exploring the pubs and taverns at Scarborough!
Where: Scarborough Renaissance Festival®, 2511 FM 66, Waxahachie, TX 75167
When: Saturdays and Sundays in April and May, and Memorial Day (Monday), 10 AM to 7 PM
Review disclosure: I was not compensated or provided any free products for this review. Opinions expressed on The Wine Fairy blog are entirely my own.
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