For the First Time Ever
WALLA WALLA WINE ON TOUR IS HEADED TO CHICAGO
There are two unforgettable ways to experience the wines of the Walla Walla Valley without even leaving the city. An intimate winery dinner on Friday night. A grand tasting with eight wine producers on Saturday afternoon. Come taste the wines and meet the people that make the Walla Walla Valley unlike any other place.
TWO WAYS TO EXPERIENCE WALLA WALLA VALLEY WINE
Choose Your Adventure. Or Do Both.
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WALLA WALLA VALLEY WINE DINNER
Friday, May 8 | 5:00 - 9:00 PMEvent details
Join us for an unforgettable evening celebrating the wines of Walla Walla. Enjoy a curated, multi-course dining experience paired with exceptional wines, guided by special guests from each featured winery.Hosted by: SIXTY FOUR WINE BAR & KITCHENSixty Four Wine Bar & Kitchen · Naperville, IL -
GRAND TASTING AT BIRCH ROAD 1:00-4:00 PM
Saturday, May 9Get Tickets
Eight standout Walla Walla wineries. Thirty-plus wines you won't find on store shelves. The winemakers and owners — there in person. A grazing table, bottles available to order, and one afternoon that brings the Walla Walla Valley to Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood.Birch Road | Lincoln Park
The Lineup for both events
FEATURED WINERIES
THE WALLA WALLA VALLEY CONNECTION
WALLA WALLA AND THE MIDWEST GO WAY BACK
Tim and Jen Armstrong were newlyweds in Chicago when Tim brought home a bottle of Walla Walla Merlot one evening. They opened it, tasted it, and it quite literally changed their life trajectory. Years of research, a job transfer to Seattle, nights on a crush pad in Woodinville, and one fortunate farm north of Walla Walla later, Armstrong Family Wines was born.
Mary Derby of DAMA Wines spent nearly a decade on the floors of some of Chicago’s most celebrated restaurants, including Spruce, where she became one of the city’s few female wine directors in the late 1990s. At a luncheon for wine directors, at Charlie Trotter’s, she brought a bottle that stopped the room: a 1996 Woodward Canyon Pinot Noir. Little did she know she’d become an owner and winemaker herself in the Walla Walla Valley.
Steve Bruere was an Iowa farm boy who came to eastern Washington on a land deal, fell in love with a valley he never intended to discover, and ended up making wine there, instead. Walla Walla has that effect on people. That became Capital Call Vintners.
Jason Fox was a sous chef in Indiana when a single glass of Bordeaux changed everything. He followed a friend to the Pacific Northwest, enrolled in Walla Walla Community College’s winemaking program sight unseen, and founded Lagana Cellars the day he graduated.
L’Ecole No. 41 has been pouring in Chicago restaurants and wine shops for years–one of the first Walla Walla wineries to build a real presence in Chicago.
Mandy Walters, Director of Hospitality at Sagemoor Estates, was born and raised in Chicago, spending thirty years in this city before the Walla Walla Valley brought her West to lead their hospitality program.
Steve Wells grew up in Wisconsin, spent years as a sommelier in New York City, putting Washington wines on his restaurant lists before he’d ever made a drop; then packed up his family and moved to Walla Walla to learn how to make wine himself, and Time & Direction was born.
Corliss Estates has spent years quietly building the kind of loyal Chicago following that only comes from a great distributor relationship and wines that earn their own reputation.