Pinot Days-Chicago

• Pinot Days Chicago Grand Festival
  Saturday November 12th, 1-5pm $50 Navy Pier
  70 Producers from California, Oregon and Burgundy (Click HERE to see all the Grand Festival Exhibitors).
• "Table Hop" Dinner at Uncommon Ground
  Thursday, November 10th, 6-11pm $90
  This is our fourth Dinner and Tasting with Uncommon Ground and their amazing food. Why change a good thing?
• Pinot Days Winemaker Dinner at Aria
  Friday, November 11th, 2011 6-10pm $95 Fairmont Hotel, Millennium Park
  14 Producers Showing the Spectacular 2008 Vintage in a sit-down tasting and dinner amongst a stunning setting.
  
• Our First Pinot Days Video
  We all had some fun chronicling why we love the grape
  and people who make our noble wine.
  

5TH ANNUAL PINOT DAYS
CHICAGO – NOVEMBER 12TH

Pinot Days Chicago goes Broader! Our theme for this year, Stylistic Diversity, calls attention to the obvious: Pinot noir is beautifully, insanely versatile! You can find a pinot for every palate, every mood, and every cuisine under the sun. This year over 70 pinot producers will pour an amazingly broad array of pinots from California and far, far beyond.Saturday’s Grand Tasting will showcase over 60 phenomenal producers of pinot noir. Consumers will be able to sample up to 150 pinots from every important domestic pinot noir region, from the Russian River Valley to Oregon, Carneros to the Santa Lucia Highlands, the Anderson Valley to the Sonoma Coast.

CELEBRATE DIVERSITY!

There has been much talk from wine writers and pundits lately about higher-alcohol wines and California wines of a riper style. Much of it has not been pretty and it is time we take a stand against this elitism. We had always hoped that when someone wanted an elegant wine, they would grab a pinot. When they wanted something more full-bodied, they would again reach for a pinot. Provided they are well made, all were potentially good wines, albeit different in style, and all were pinot.
We’ve always admired pinot’s amazing stylistic diversity, as well as the creative acumen of its artisan producers. And we admire those who extol the virtues of what they like rather than tearing down those they don’t, and this is especially true of a wine writer. What a wine writer’s job ought not be is to subjectively promote their own particular, political positions and preferences, and their own very small posse of like-minded winemakers. Doing so serves no one but themselves and their handful of friends in the industry, and throws the vast majority of talented, passionate, hard-working winemakers under the bus.
Drink what you like, discern between the good and the bad and leave the politics for the small-minded.