Yes, the DCA Food and Wine Festival is a lot smaller. One of the main differences is that at WDW there are over 20 food and beverage booths set up where you can eat around the world - they don't have that at DCA. Many of the counter service restaurants serve a special menu item during the Festival, but it's generally a full-size dish and not appetizer-sized. Now, this year they are going to have another food location that will be serving more smaller-sized foods, but we don't know what will be there yet - and the location is tucked way back in the corner of the Hollywood area, so it's not in the middle of things.
I think the food, wine, and beer seminars are a little easier to get into than at WDW, though for the big celebrity chefs people get there 1-2 hours in advance! This year they are charging (a whole dollar) for the wine, beer, and spirits seminars, so I'm not sure how that will affect the attendance. The seminars are much busier on the weekends. But generally the ones that are early in the day don't fill up.
There's not as much to do as at the Epcot Festival - the merchandise area is much smaller, though I think as far as the number of cooking demonstrations or wine/beer/spirits tastings go, they are about equal. The main thing for me is that there's just not nearly the variety to eat - we'll see if the new location this year helps with that or not.
The "signature events" that I've attended have all been really good, though - we've enjoyed the winemaker dinners, Sweet Sundays, and Taste.
Hope that helps.
