Sold-Out Napa Valley BottleRock Set To Kick Off

NAPA, CA — With the sold-out 2018 BottleRock Napa Valley taking place Friday through Monday at the Napa Valley Expo, a flurry of final preparations for the Memorial Day weekend music and culinary festival are underway and have been for months.

Tens of thousands of fans are eager to start exploring food trucks, craft beers, wine tasting and more — all while being entertained by 86 musical performances on multiple stages in addition to aftershow performances and appearances by sports and entertainment celebrities, organizers said.

Headlining performers for 2018 BottleRock Napa Valley include Bruno Mars, Muse, The Killers, Earth Wind and Fire, Snoop Dogg, The Head and the Heart, Dhani Harrison, Billy Idol, The Struts and dozens of others.

Culinary stars including bestselling cookbook author Trisha Yearwood, Food Network chef Giado De Laurentiis and Napa's Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto will team up with celebrities such as Snoop Dogg, comedian George Lopez and musician Halsey on the Williams Sonoma stage.

Doors open at 11:30 a.m. and the last act ends at 10 p.m. BottleRock will be streamed live on Twitter starting at 3 p.m. each day.

• Bruno Mars, The Killers, Muse To Headline BottleRock Napa Valley
  

With the countdown on, traffic near the Expo has been snarled this week. One of the biggest tasks in getting the longtime community facility ready for flocks of foodies and music fans trekking to the Napa Valley was replacing sod installed just last year. Because the October North Bay firestorm resulted in the Expo serving as staging area for some 2,500 firefighters and their equipment, new sod was installed for the main stage spectator area in April at a cost of $330,000.

In addition to the new sod, crews erected VIP skyboxes for event sponsors including American Express. Several small structures, a ticket booth and restroom buildings were torn down to make way for the new structures.

Also for this year's BottleRock, several portable cellphone towers for major carriers were installed in anticipation of some 40,000 fans expected to attend each day.

General tickets for the music and culinary festival now in its sixth vintage sold out in less than 5 minutes. Three-day tickets were gone in minutes and single-day tickets sold out in seconds.

Those still looking for passes can check a ticket exchange set up on the BottleRock website. Some fans were having luck finding single-day tickets through various online providers.

Festival details and daily event lineups can all be found at Bottlerocknapavalley.com.

Bay City News Service and local photographer Al Francis contributed to this report.

Photos by Al Francis/Napasonomaphotos.com