25th Anniversary: The Beach, the Crowd, the Crisis: Lee Brian Schrager and the Story Behind America’s Wine & Food Festival Boom (and Slowdown)

As wine wobbles and tastes change, the architect of America’s food-and-wine festival boom explains what still drives crowds.

For more than a quarter century, Lee Brian Schrager has occupied a singular, slightly enigmatic position in the American gathering economy—not a chef, not a media personality, not a restaurateur, but the person who decided where the food-and-wine world would assemble, who would be seen once it did, and which cities—if only for a few charged days each ye…