3rd Annual Pinot Days Grand Festival Public Tasting

November 13-14

 

Pinot Days is a wine event that celebrates pinot noir in its many styles, ranging from modern to earthy to elegant. Unlike wine events that appeal to a narrow customer base featuring wines more alike than different, Pinot Days brings together pinot producers representing every California pinot style, appellation and price point, as well as a number of pinots from Oregon, Germany, New Zealand and Burgundy. Pinot Days also celebrates the passionate people who make pinot noir, which is no easy variety of grape with which to contend, but one that has the innate ability to surpass all other grape varieties.  Pinot Days will enable you to explore new producers, find wines you love and can afford, and become a pinot devotee if you are not one already.

 

From the Grand Festival to the Winemakers Dinner to the more intimate tastings, each of the Pinot Days events will be educational, stimulating and fun. Our goal is to make each event accessible to everyone by keeping the costs reasonable and the attitude casual. Pinot Days will never become an elitist event affordable only to the rich, nor will it become an “insider” event accessible only to industry folks and pinot geeks like us. Rather, we invite insiders to come and enjoy, and we encourage those new to pinot noir – those of you who do not yet know the depth, breadth and sheer loveliness of our noblest grape – to come and taste for yourselves.  And meet the winemakers, who are some of the most interesting, passionate, gifted and colorful people we know.  We hope to see you there.

Purchase Tickets Here

 

Mark your calendars for The Publican's James Beard Foundation dinner on October 18. Tickets are already available and going fast. The dinner is a veritable Cavalcade of Paul Kahan Restaurant Stars, with courses contributed by the Publican's Becky Broeske and Brian Huston, Avec's Koren Grieveson, Blackbird's Mike Sheerin, and Kahan himself. Add three wine pairings (Blackbird Vineyards, natch), two beer pairings (one each from Goose Island and Three Floyds), and Fox & Obel bread, and a cocktail hour that pairs pork rinds and champagne, and the $125 price tag (with proceeds going to the James Beard Foundation) starts to look like a steal. (312) 733-9555 for reservations.

From the Chicago Tribune's Phil Vettel: The Sunday buffet brunch—the big, sprawling, nine-station, three-hour extravaganza—has become an endangered species. There was a time when hotels of even modest ambition loaded up their chafing dishes with scrambled eggs, pork sausages and various hot entrees every Sunday. No more. Many hotels, which still offer large-scale buffets on such key holidays as Easter and Mother's Day, have abandoned the notion of an every-Sunday production. There's no weekly brunch at the Palmer House Hilton. None at the Hyatt Regency Chicago. Even the venerable Drake Hotel, whose Sunday brunches were a destination for a generation of diners, only offers brunch a few times a year.