The spring edition of the second annual Chicago Wine Fest is one of the top events in Chicago. The festival is one of the top wine festivals in a city known for its great food and wine.
The Chicago Wine Fest started in River North and has been a staple on the north side for years. This year the fest will be held at Cafe Brauer at Lincoln Park Zoo. All proceeds from the festival will go to support the zoo.
While the festival is in Lincoln Park this year, it was previously held in River North. The wine fest will have 35 wines for attendees to sample. Some of the wineries featured include Grateful Grapes Wine Company and Social Sparkling Wine. These wineries not only have great wine but give back as well. Social Sparkling Wine is a female-fronted winery that creates healthy alcohol. Grateful Grapes gives 50% of its profits to charity, so sampling their wine will help a good cause, too.
The Chicago Wine Fest will not only have excellent wine.The festival will also have delicious appetizers to sample, with cheese plates to pair the different wines with as well. The party will also have fun music with entertainment from DJ Cesar Diaz.
Chicago Wine Fest celebrates the best wine from around the globe. A celebrity that has made Chicago a wine destination is Alpana Singh. The master sommelier is the owner of The Boarding House, a restaurant and wine bar. Singh explained why fine wine is so important to her restaurant.
"One of my major goals is for the restaurant to become a breeding ground for sommeliers, and also to show operators there’s a lot of money to be made in wine!", said Singh." If you run it properly, hire the right person to run it, train your staff, put the investment in it, provide the great wine service… people are like, ‘Wow!’ The result is that we sell 50–65 cases of wine a week. That’s a lot of wine!"
A celebrity that has made fine dining a mainstay of Chicago is Rick Bayless, the famous chef, and owner of Frontera Grill.
"When you say "fine dining Mexican," even to this day, I would say 90 percent of the people in the United States would laugh. I knew I had a lot of education to do and I thought when we opened Frontera, that was actually a step up for a lot of people", said Bayless."I knew that I couldn’t take it all the way to fine dining (right away) but I could take it another step up and see if our guests would go on that journey with us. They did."
Chicago Wine Fest is one of the best ways to celebrate spring. This day-long party is a can’t miss event if you’re a wine lover.