Wine & Spirits - June 2017 - 42

Chicago

Steak-Out

Six Windy City Wine Retailers and their Under $20 Reds for Summer Grilling

At the House of Glunz in Chicago's Old Town neighborhood, in a wood-paneled back room, rare classic
wines like 1945 Château Lafite coexist with vintage
crystal from Westphalia. But in the front room, memorabilia for Schlitz beer hangs from the walls and ceiling. That's because, according to his granddaughter
Barbara Glunz-Donovan, founder Louis Glunz, Sr.,
was the first merchant to sell Schlitz outside of Milwaukee. The House of Glunz is Chicago's oldest wine
store and it's full of other relics from earlier times,
from the American Medicinal Spirits Company's Prohibition-era crate tops (their contents "for medicinal purposes only") to beautiful old bottles of 1864
Blandy's Madeira.
Compared to the House of Glunz, Red & White
Wines in Wicker Park is positively futuristic with its
polished concrete floors and circular cubbyholes for
individual bottles. Owner Nathan Adams takes a natural slant. "We need to know the growers," he says of
the wines he stocks, "how they are treating the land,
that they're not adding yeast, or adding or subtracting anything." Adams hasn't wavered from his philosophy since opening in 2008 and has acquired a
dedicated following. In fact, Chicago hosted its first
natural wine fair in mid-March, and many producers
leading the natural-wine charge were in attendance.
Then there's Plum Market, an all-in-one grocerycum-wine-store just across the street and down the
block from the House of Glunz. Anthony Minne
oversees the wine department, and walking through
his aisles is like walking through the Narnia of wine
cellars. All those beasts you hear about but so rarely
see are all in one place: Ceritas, Kongsgaard, Arena,
Domaine Leflaive, Clape, Diamond Creek, Dujac,
Barthod, Conterno, Dönnhoff, Grünhäuser... While
the store offers a Who's Who of Famous Growers,
Minne maintains a steady eye on the everyday, with
plenty of inexpensive options for grab-and-go shoppers, as well as lots of beer and cider.
We set out to learn more about the people behind
Chicago's dynamic wine scene, rounding up six buy42

WINE & SPIRITS

JUNE 2017

ers from the city's top independent wine retailers
and posing a challenge: Visit each other's stores and
pick out two ultimate under-$20 wines. We called on
Nathan Adams of Red & White Wines, Mike Baker
of Vin Chicago, Craig Perman of Perman Wine Selections, Sandeep Ghaey of Vinic Wine, Anthony Minne
of Plum Market and Barbara Glunz-Donovan of the
House of Glunz.
Given the historical importance of Chicago's
stockyards, which once supplied much of the nation
with beef, we asked them to focus their selections on
wines likely to be amazing with steak. On March 28,
the retailers gathered at Chicago's RPM Steak to taste
through the 12 wines (blind), and test them against
medium-rare, grass-fed New York strip sourced from
Slagel Farms in Illinois.
"In Chicago, the side with our meat is meat," said
Craig Perman as we sat down to taste the wines over
lunch. The retailers generally agreed that Chicago is
a strong cabernet town. Yet, when it came to actually selecting wines, none of them picked a cabernet.
That might be because cabernet isn't usually cheap.
But also, many felt that brighter wines actually pair
better with steak.
The conversation took Mike Baker back to an Oregon trip. "I went to Pinot Camp several years ago,
drinking pinot noir day and night," he said. "And the
last night, we were with the Evenstads at Domaine
Serene and he cooked some steak on the grill. He
busted out some high-end Napa cabs to serve with
the steak, and just for fun-you know, they're pretty
crafty the way they set up the tastings-they set up
these cabs and he brought out some pinot noir and
some Burgundy, and our palates were so tuned into
pinot noir at that point, everyone's preference ended
up going to pinot. The cabs seemed very heavy, with
the oak and the alcohol-none of those provided the
partnership with this delicious meat the way that the
pinot noirs did. Especially in Chicago, we think cabernet: steak. But when you do that comparative thing
and have that acid it can be a real eye-opener."

Photos by Beking Joassaint

by Sarah Sutel Looper



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - June 2017

Contents
Wine & Spirits - June 2017 - Cover1
Wine & Spirits - June 2017 - Cover2
Wine & Spirits - June 2017 - 1
Wine & Spirits - June 2017 - 2
Wine & Spirits - June 2017 - 3
Wine & Spirits - June 2017 - 4
Wine & Spirits - June 2017 - Contents
Wine & Spirits - June 2017 - 6
Wine & Spirits - June 2017 - 7
Wine & Spirits - June 2017 - 8
Wine & Spirits - June 2017 - 9
Wine & Spirits - June 2017 - 10
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Wine & Spirits - June 2017 - Cover3
Wine & Spirits - June 2017 - Cover4
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/winespirits/2024spring
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/winespirits/2023winter
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/winespirits/201512
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/winespirits/2015fall
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/winespirits/201508
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/winespirits/201412
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/winespirits/2014winter
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