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One Word Wins 40 Vineyards' Wines and 16 Restaurants' Snacks - Among Other Fabulous Foodie Prize News

Ambrosial. Hotdaym. Inspiring. AMAZEBALLS. Orgasmic. Scrumtrulescent. Leathery. Gone.

The words flowed like wine—make that a river of wine—after we asked the Weekly Facebook family to swirl up a single favorite descriptor they use to describe fermented grape juice.

Splendiferous. Piquant. Intoxicating. Irresistible. Chewy! Paradise.

All told there were 142 entries.

Powerful. DeVINE. Necessary. Balanced. Unicorn-erific. Adjectivable. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

But only one got the most likes: succulent.

Which means Jenny Helms DeFisher of, er, Hackettstown, N.J. (?!) wins two tickets to Party in the Hangar at Del Monte Aviation 1-4pm tomorrow (Saturday, Nov. 10) with 40-plus Monterey County Vintners and Growers Association wineries tasting folks on wines, plus a try-and-buy wine market, grub from 16 purveyors including Carmel Valley Ranch, STICKS and Gino’s, appearances from local celebrity chef Todd Fisher, vinter Q and As and food trucks like Babaloo Cuban, Carmel Valley Coffee Roasting Company, Bacon Bacon SF and others serving (truck fare at added cost).

Not sure if her Facebook hometown is outdated or if she's planning to hop a red eye, but we'll find out. (Turns out she moved to Carmel relatively recently.)

Her jackpot—two tickets worth $140—is just the latest in a number of big payoff contests that have netted as much entertainment as they have earnings. What follows is a look back at some other winners, what they won and how.

But first a bonus note.

The next contest: Name the best way to drink wine on the Weekly Facebook page and most clever answer, as determined by our foodie writer team, scores two tickets to the Monterey Wine Walk on Cannery Row.

Each $45 ticket translates to 12 tasting vouchers and a map with 25 atypical tasting spots like Mirror Maze, Bullwacker's, Sunglass Hut, Sand to Glass and Cannery Row Brewing Company, which in turn showcase wineries like De Tierra, Ventana, Tudor and Lockwood. The Ventura version of this event has grown to be wildly popular in just a few installments.

And as promised, some of the past winners from this year alone include:

• Chris Lorenc won tickets to Big Sur Food & Wine's Dinner With Friends—a $310 value—with his description of what makes the South Coast great.

I'll quote Jeffers: "...corruption / Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there are left the mountains." Big Sur is where I unplug. I don't run away from anything. I run towards the mountains, creeks, storm-fronts, fire, sea, friends.

• On the tailfin of our Seafood Fraud cover story on fish dishes masquerading as different menu items than they prove to be, Dave Miller won $50 in gift certificates to English Ales by correctly identifying striped marlin DNA using a DNA database and a snippet of code provided.

• Dr. Sweet Sauce took home a pair of tickets to the Monterey Bay Beer Festival ($80) with a strong and strange beer haiku that bested a bunch of entertaining entries:

Chilled beer in our mugs,/ Look, the heads so full and thick, / Let's toast for hair plugs!

• For two tickets to MEarth's Dinner in the Vineyard with Cal Stamenov at Bernardus, it was a caption contest to pair with a picture of a student in the garden holding the tiniest organic carrot. Alan Vasquez took two tickets ($300) with "The root of nutrition!"

• Gloria Brokaw laid down the best bacon-infused haiku to score tickets to Bacon, Blues and Brews Festival ($100).

Was it an apple? / Or bacon that tempted Eve? / I am a bad Jew.

• When Todd Stone named his favorite local dish—"angry prawns" at Schooners—and the comment got the most likes, he won tickets to Cooking For Solutions' incredible gala event ($310), which was already completely sold out.