Pechanga Chocolate Decadence Festival 2016 - recap

Ever been to a chocolate festival? How much better would it be if wine were involved?

We were invited to Pechanga Resort and Casino to check out the Chocolate Decadence festival on Friday February 26, 2016. The event is held in the Pechanga Grand Ballroom. General admission tickets let us enter at 7pm and those with VIP could get in as early as 5:30! There was also designated driver tickets available though all guests are required to be 21+.

Within 10 minutes of the general admission time, there were already 40 people lined up, eager to enter! No worries though because there was more than enough chocolate to go round! I'd call this a Vegas buffet... dessert style!

Buy a wine & cheese plate for $5 to support the selected charity Habitat for Humanity Inland Valley! This holds everything very well as you can see above! We also saw people who brought their own wine and cheese plates, some of which were pretty fancy.

We stepped into the room and noticed several dessert stations around the room, each with their own centerpieces! This one is the chocolate candy station! The wines were lined up along the walls of the room but we of course headed straight toward the sweet decadence awaiting us!

This station had an ice sculpture and a crepe station! A man to the left provided ice cream to go with the freshly made crepes!

Another pretty centerpiece. It was surrounded by all kinds of tempting desserts!

A chocolate fountain to dip snacks! There was also a white chocolate fountain!

Plenty of options for using with the chocolate fountains!

Platters of cupcakes!

Plates of macarons!

Cake cones tower! And so much more!

We definitely tried quite a lot of desserts that night! All were from the Pechanga bakery.

After desserts, we explored the rest of the room.

I loved these dapper men showing off Rosa Regale wine!

We have a mini bottle of this lemoncello at home so it was cool to see a full bottle! The other item Gozio was a strong amaretto liqueur.

One of our favorite samples was from Kalifornia Distiller. These two flavored Nimble nectar cocktails were so enjoyable!

Isn't this such an eye-catching bottle from Blanc de Bleu? 

Bucket of wine bottles from Bel Vino Vineyard.

There were quite a couple of wineries to try! We won't bore you with a gazillion pictures so just trust us on that!

For those who enjoy coffee, there was a station for you too! Chocolate goes with coffee right?

They had FUJI WATER! This was awesome. Drink enough to keep hydrated!

Raffle tickets were available for a wine country escape and benefits the charity.

Silent auction fundraiser was another way to raise money for the charity!

There was also live music and other entertainment at the event!

There were enough stations and dessert options that we never had to wait long. The crepe station took a few more minutes since they were being freshly made. I guess the only downfall is that you can only eat so many sweets before you need a break. Our last chocolate adventure was For the Love of Chocolate in Escondido which had some savory items to help break up the sugar rush. Still, this event was well run and definitely a good activity for wine drinkers. And helping out a charity? Sounds good to me.

Official event information is available here. It includes info about the event, resort and Habitat for Humanity Inland Valley charity.

Disclaimer: We were provided tickets to the event but all opinions are my own