Some of my worst childhood memories directly involve wine. That might be true for many people, but for me, the bad memories have nothing to do with the possible affects of other people imbibing too much. My memories of wine are intertwined with Illinois, more specifically, two Lutheran churches, one in Princeton, the other in Arlington Heights. As a child, my parents attended a handful of different churches around Lake Geneva. Thankfully for me, all of those local churches seemed to have an understanding that small children generally dislike the taste of wine. At my grandmother’s churches, the same could unfortunately not be said. I remember sitting on wooden pews on either Christmas or Easter or some other Holiday gathering. I remember the smell of the Princeton Lutheran church. It smelled like an antique store. It looked like an antique store. The pastor had a clammy, limp handshake; a handshake so clammy and limp that even my parents avoided his outstretched hand as best they could.
I’d sit in that church, and I’d fear the communion. As a boy who grew up in churches that could more or less be described as Pentecostal, the procedure and nuance of a traditional service was a strange thing for me to observe. The way the hymn numbers were posted on wooden plaques to the left and right of the stage. The way we always had to turn around and shake stranger’s hands midway through the service. The sitting and the standing, the standing and the sitting. It was foreign to me, but it wasn’t the procedure that I feared. Resting somewhere near the altar there was a cup. A big cup. Like the Stanley Cup, but a little smaller. It was the cup that I may be asked to drink out of, and inside that cup there was wine. There were times when I’d have to feign a drink from that cup. I’d wrap my lips around it and let the wine simply bump into my outer lips, and never would a fermented drop find its way onto my frightened tongue.
There were other times when we were offered the small plastic cups, and while making our way to our seats, my brothers and I would scan the altar area for any sign of those cups. We’d hope we missed communion by a week. We’d hope they ran out of wine and instead had to use grape juice. We faked illness and trips to the bathroom in hopes of accidentally missing the administering of the wine. For most of my childhood those efforts were unsuccessful, and my introduction to wine at a young age in those coerced situations trained my palate to abhor the taste. Church I like. Communion I like and respect. It’s the wine that does me in.
And so, this weekend, I will not be attending the Lake Geneva Wine Festival. My distaste for the vile liquid is forever cemented, and at my age there appears to be little benefit to forcing myself to acquire a taste for something that I have no use for. For the hordes of wine lovers out there, my absence is your gain. Beginning tomorrow, the Grand Geneva (formerly Playboy Club and Americana) will play host to a a weekend-long event that I assume would appeal to most wine lovers in the area. There’s one thing that I’ve learned about the Grand Geneva in recent years- if they host an event, or in some way orchestrate one, it will be put on with flair and executed perfectly. The event begins Friday afternoon, and runs through Saturday afternoon with a “Grand Tasting” taking place around 12:30 pm. There will be a veritable pantheon (thanks Alton) of local and Milwaukee based chefs, but I must admit I know none of them. If Graham Elliot shows up, by all means let me know.
There will be some events taking place downtown on Saturday as well, but the literature that I’ve read doesn’t make it clear exactly what will be occurring. If you don’t want to go to the Grand Geneva, just walk around downtown Saturday and I’m sure there will be some specials at shops and restaurants that coincide with the event. The Brick Street Market, my favorite local cheese shop (Delavan), will be providing cheese for the event. Their cheese is transformational. Like Obama, but you actually like the transformation. If you go, ask to try their Pleasant Ridge Reserve. Produced locally by the Uplands Cheese Company, this cheese is the best cheese I’ve ever tasted, and coming from me, that’s quite an endorsement. It’s delicious, and you should seek it out this weekend.
The weekend looks like good fun, and with weather that looks terrific on Sunday and marginal on Saturday, perhaps a morning or afternoon spent indoors being entertained and fed by the good folks at the Lake Geneva Wine Festival sounds like a good idea. Perhaps this event will continue to grow. Perhaps ten years from now we’ll have famous chefs and the event will be hosted by Food and Wine and we’ll end up being a draw for foodies much like the Aspen fest is. Then Charlie Trotter and Graham Elliot and the Banno’s guys will show up. Maybe Rick Bayless would shed his Chicago permanence and make the trip to the lake. Maybe then even I’d think about going.