A Napa Valley-style dining experience will soon be available just outside of Wichita
Soon, Wichitans will be able to have a Napa Valley-esque experience — complete with wine and dinner enjoyed with views of a vineyard — without leaving the state.
Inspired by their clients’ desire to enjoy their wine outdoors during the COVID-19 pandemic — and by the fact that wedding business has slowed significantly over the last year — the owners of Grace Hill Winery in nearby Whitewater are about to introduce a large new vineyard-side patio and an outdoor bar.
Not only that, but they’re also about to start experimenting with something they’ve long wanted to add to their list of services: lunch and dinner.
Starting on April 30, the winery will begin staying open later on weekend nights, serving wines by the bottle, glass or flight from an outdoor bar on its new 2,000 square-foot-patio and offering a menu of panini sandwiches. The owners hope to eventually expand the menu to include other options like pizza.
The winery has always offered tastings onsite, and owners had long toyed with the idea of offering vineyard-adjacent dining. But before the pandemic hit, they weren’t sure how to do it.
“The thing we always ran into was we usually had weddings to compete with it,” Sollo said. “But with the pandemic cutting out most of our weddings, this is kind of a natural transition.”
The patio, which is on the east side of the winery’s event center, is still under construction, and the owners plan to add more outdoor furniture and some type of shade structure. It sits about 15 feet from the vineyard, and in addition to Grace Hill wines, visitors will also be able to order wine slushies and beer.
Starting on April 30, the patio and kitchen will be open from noon to 6 p.m. Thursdays, Sundays and Mondays and from noon until sunset, which is usually about 8:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays. (The winery will close the patio early a few times over the spring and summer for weddings, so people should check social media for those.)
Most nights, visitors will also be able to enjoy lawn games in a courtyard area on the other side of the hedgerow from the patio. It’s usually occupied by weddings but is now more available, Sollo said.
Grace Hill Winery, which is 30 miles northeast of Wichita, is owned by Dave and Natalie Sollo. Jeff Sollo is their son and helps run the place.
The winery includes 11 acres and 4,500 vines, and over the 13 years the family has run Grace Hill, they’ve added a tasting room and event center. The winery harvests about 30 tons of grapes each year and grows chambourcin, norton, seyval, chardonel, muskat, vignoles and crimson cabernet grapes, which are turned into about 20 different varieties of wine. Grace Hill offers both red and white wines, both dry and sweet.
The winery is also known for accepting volunteers each fall to help with harvest in the vineyards, and people clamor to sign up for grape picking spots. They’re rewarded with a picnic lunch and the ability to say they’ve worked in a vineyard.
Grace Hill served in a Kansas City castle
The addition of food and an outdoor bar isn’t the only big news at Grace Hill, either.
The Sollos have formed a partnership with the owners of Wandering Vine, a new business that has taken over the historic 1907 Caenen Castle at 12401 Johnson Drive in Shawnee — a suburb of Kansas City.
The new owners are billing Wandering Vine as an “urban winery experience,” and they’re operating it as a restaurant, too. It serves lunch, dinner, brunch and small plates, and Grace Hill wines are on its wine menu. Chef Renee Kelly renovated the building starting in 2003 and ran a farm-to-table restaurant called Renee Kelly’s Harvest there until 2017.
Wandering Vines has also devoted a room off the castle’s patio exclusively to Grace Hill wines. Now, people in the Kansas City area can purchase 15 different Grace Hill wines by the bottle and take them home to enjoy.
Sollo said the family is excited about that project, too.
“Wichita has always been very good to us, and people have always enjoyed our wines,” he said. “We’re always interested to see how we’ll do in other markets, and this is our first foray into that.”
This story was originally published April 7, 2021 at 2:26 PM.
.jpg)