Two decades ago, when Eduard Seitan was a server at bygone Michelin-starred restaurant Blackbird in Chicago’s West Loop, a couple of regulars came in with a hankering for a great white Burgundy. Seitan suggested a barrel-aged Chardonnay from Wyncroft Wine, a then unknown winery in southwest Michigan. “Absolutely not!” they replied incredulously. “Give us a great French white Burgundy.” Seitan promptly opened and decanted the $120 Wyncroft anyway. The couple gushed over the lush, floral, full-bodied liquid, certain it had come from the prestigious Bâtard-Montrachet grand cru appellation.
“Then I showed them the bottle,” Seitan says, shrugging at his pricey little bet. “It was the only way I could convince them there’s good wine being made in Michigan.”
Seitan now works next door at Avec, as a partner at One Off Hospitality. It’s not inconceivable that he’ll deploy similar tactics for Illinois wine here — specifically rosé, which the state is betting big on and he’s championing at every opportunity.
“Rosé is the best wine that Illinois produces,” Seitan says.
In fact, it has been the state’s official wine since 2016, and few people have tasted more Illinois-made juice than Seitan, who has judged the state’s annual wine competition and appeared at state fair wine festivals for eight-odd years. Of course, he wasn’t responsible for making dry rosé the state’s sanctioned style.
The Illinois Rosé Project began in 2015 when the Illinois Grape Growers and Vintners Alliance (IGGVA) convened with state enology specialist Bradley Beam to determine whether the roughly
