Posts Tagged ‘Oya Restaurant & Lounge’
Inauguration Eats: Illinois Wines
Andrew Stover is the sommelier at Oya Restaurant & Lounge and at its new sister restaurant, Sei. Last year, Stover asked diners at Oya to choose between Arizona and Illinois wines in a sort of enological straw poll for the November general election. Lynfred Winery’s seyval blanc was the hands-down winner. It was, no doubt, just a coincidence that the sweet white wine came from Illinois. As a sort of curtain call/marketing hook for the inauguration, Stover is bringing the seyval back to Oya, along with some other bottles from the Obama heartland.
Illinois, Stover says, has a history of winemaking that predates America’s more recognizable grape-growing states. “California was not even heard of back” when Illinois starting making wine in the 18th century, Stover says. The problem is that Illinois winemakers “don’t grow a lot of the grapes that we’re familiar with. Sure, they have chardonnay, but they have a lot of strange grapes,” too, like seyval and Marechal Foch, which actually do better in the harsh Midwestern climate.
