My Kind of Town

CHICAGO, IL-April 30 Our son Robert tried to talk us into driving all the way to Chicago last night, but we had reached our limit after 12 hours in the car and stopped at one of the few motel exists in Ohio.

We were close enough so this morning, we didn't even have to set an alarm to wake up. In fact, we actually arrived a little early for our trade lunch. We killed an hour by window shopping although Hank is not too fun to shop with. He mostly enjoyed checking prices and being shocked by them.

Lunch was at Joe's Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab in downtown Chicago. We had 18 at the lunch in a private room including a couple of employees from Heritage, our Illinois distributor, and several accounts. I had eaten here before with Robert several years ago and the food was as good as I remember. Several of us ordered the stone crabs and we were pleased to see how well both the CYRUS and the Alexander School Cabernet Sauvignon went with them. The nicest surprise was that Jerry Hirsch, who started Heritage more than 25 years ago, was able to join us. It was so good to see him. We have such a long history with him and Heritage Wine Cellars and he has always been such a good supporter of our wines. Happy birthday, Jerry! (Today is also Hank's mother Maggie's

After lunch, we visited with Vincent Feola from Texas de Brazil, a growing chain of Brazilian steakhouses. They are opening an 800 seat restaurant in downtown Chicago and are in the midst of putting together the wine list. They have sold a lot of AVV wines in their other restaurants. From there, we visited Lauren Domenech at Randolph Wine Cellars. They have a great wine shop west of Chicago's Loop and a beautiful wine bar (The Tasting Room) next door. We tasted her on a few wines and she especially liked the Redemption Zin. From there, it was on to Sam's Wines & Spirits for a California Wine Tasting event from 5 until 8.

After Sam's we headed to Harry Carey's to meet our daughter-in-law Kim for dinner. Hank thought his filet was the best he has ever had. The other highlight was that Ernie Banks, the baseball Hall of Famer, was sitting right across from us. We were tempted to asked for an autograph, but he was so surrounded by fans, we hated to bother him.