The Fifth Annual Windy City Wine Festival takes place on September 11th and 12th in Daley Bicentennial Plaza in Grant Park. Tickets are $25 dollars in advance (purchase by 9/10/09 online) and $30 at the entrance and include a souvenir wine glass and ten tastings, as well as entrance to various seminars and demonstrations. Additional tasting tickets can be purchased at the festival for $5 for 10 tastings. From my experience, you will never need to purchase those additional tastings, because many vendors never bothered to take tickets. We also ran into a number of people giving away extra tasting tickets as they were leaving, simply because they weren't handing them in to vendors. Maybe they will have their act together this year.
The website for the event boasts samplings of 250 wines from around the world, though your experience may vary wildly from tent to tent. At one tent, we spoke to an enthusiastic vendor from Spain last year (the rep had actually flown in from Spain for the event) who was more than willing to let us try and discuss every wine she had to offer when she understood that we had a particular interest in Spanish wines and familiarity with the various regions. At the next tent, the wine was suspiciously similar to Boone's Farm - and this is coming from someone who is not entirely adverse to fruit wine. I am from Michigan afterall:)
I checked out the list of participating vineyards this year and it looks pretty good. I am excited to see Sebastiani Vineyards, which I visited in Sonoma a few years ago, and Cline Cellars. There are at least two local Illnois vineyards, which I haven't yet visited or tried, but are on my list. I am happy to see Gekkeikan Sake will be there, too, as we are fans of Gekkeikan Horin.
For more details and to purchase advance tickets, visit http://www.windycitywinefestival.com/.
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