Epicurean Passport Weekend Returns to Hotel Jerome for Sixth Edition
Aspen's historic property hosts curated culinary festival with exclusive dinners, master classes, and encounters with acclaimed chefs, vintners, and mixologists
Hotel Jerome, Auberge Collection, is bringing back its signature Epicurean Passport Weekend for a sixth consecutive year—a three-day immersion into high-level gastronomic culture that has become essential viewing for serious food and wine enthusiasts. The event brings together world-class culinary figures, rare bottle selections, and the kind of behind-the-scenes access that separates genuine collector experiences from standard resort programming.
The weekend's structure rewards deep engagement. Rather than relying on generic tasting formats, Hotel Jerome curates intimate dinners hosted by renowned chefs, master classes led by acclaimed mixologists, and lounges where serious oenophiles can access bottles and vintners typically reserved for private collections. The specifics of programming vary year to year, but the throughline remains constant: exclusivity calibrated to actual expertise rather than disposable income alone.
Aspen as a venue carries particular weight here. Hotel Jerome itself opened in 1889 and remains architecturally significant—the building functions as the event's anchor, its historical credibility lending weight to the curatorial choices made around it. An Auberge Collection property, it's part of a portfolio that prioritizes experiential precision over scale, which typically translates to rigorous vetting of both programming and participants. This matters. Collector-level weekends succeed or fail based on the quality of curation, and Hotel Jerome's track record suggests the selections remain genuinely thoughtful rather than algorithmically assembled.
The sixth iteration arrives at a moment when food and wine collecting itself has become increasingly segmented. The rise of natural wine communities, the premiumization of spirits categories, and the celebrity-chef economy have fractured what once felt like a monolithic scene. Events that still manage to thread multiple lanes—serious wine, serious spirits, serious cooking—without descending into mere spectacle have become more valuable, not less.
For collectors tracking where institutions are placing their bets on hospitality and experience, Hotel Jerome's commitment to returning to this format annually signals confidence in the appetite for curated rather than mass-market programming. The specifics of this year's lineup, including which vintners and chefs are confirmed, will ultimately determine whether this edition matches previous years' caliber. But the fact of its return, in a market increasingly saturated with one-off experiences and influencer-driven events, suggests something more durable is taking shape.