Royal Vintner's Gala

The Royal Vintner's Gala is a wine festival historically hosted by the King of Kinilan.  The main attraction of the event is a wine tasting done by the king or queen to determine their Royal Vintner, who has the honour of supplying wine to the royal court.  After the Wine Wars, it became largely ceremonial, as House Andraste was granted the best wineries in the country, making them effectively impossible to compete against.

History

The Royal Vintner's Gala began as a simple event open only to the Royal Family and representatives of the various noble families submitting a wine to the competition, and was often held only once in a king or queen's reign. The event was limited to a formal tasting, held after dinner. Each competing house's representative would present a selection of three wines for consideration, and the ruling monarch would consider the submissions and judge which they prefer.
Over time, the event slowly grew in complexity. At first there were private invitations: sommeliers invited to provide further input about the wines being offered, favoured members of the court. Then the invitations were issued to the whole family, along with an expansion of the event to include dinner and a dance, though it remained an exclusive and special occasion for several generations.
That all changed when King Katayun IX came to power. He was a king exceptionally fond of wine, and was fond of throwing extravagant parties. He was the first king to invite the entire royal court to the Gala, and would host the event every few years. Despite the increasing extravagance of the event, this eroded the honour and respect accorded the Royal Vintner, as the title was subject to the whims of the King. It also led to an increasing bitterness between competitors, leading to covert sabotage between the events, primarily in the form of attempting to disrupt deliveries of the wines being presented by competing factions. This competitiveness in turn gave the Royal Spymaster, Ealdwine Andraste, the opportunity to implement the plan that culminated in the Wine Wars.
After that incident, the Gala became like any other Royal Gala, and was held once every five years. Vintners were still welcome to offer their best work to the king or queen for consideration, but their submission was more of an advertisement to the court than serious competition against the unparalleled vintners of House Andraste - the combined prowess of several major competitors in the event now under a single house.
The event came to an end after the Kinilan Revolution. The official reason given was an austerity measure, as one of the principle motivations of the revolution was the wasteful extravagance of the nobility. However, the Royal Vintner's Gala was only cancelled after House Andraste and others founded the Abizin Loyalists, a collection of nobles that oppose the new government and wish to see House Abizin restored to their historic position as absolute rulers of Kinilan. Many suggest the real motivation was political, an attempt to marginalize House Andraste, or at least distance the government from them.