The Byron Colby Barn & Wine Knows

Byron Colby Barn
1561 Jones Point RoadGrayslake, Illinois 60030
847.543.1202 or at bcbarn@prairiecrossing.com

Wine Knows
1130 Washington St., Grayslake, Illinois 60030
847-223-8402

Last Friday (yes, I am over a week behind in blogging) we went to our first Byron Colby barn event. Officially...

The Byron Colby Barn, a Lake County dairy barn, was built in 1885 and restored in 1996 to serve as a community center for Prairie Crossing and the larger community.

There are events there every month and you can even rent it out. It's quite nice and very picturesque. I understand the fitness center for the neighborhood is located in the basement of the barn (we haven't been in it yet; I've sent in our $10 key fob fee, but haven't gotten the key back yet).

This particular event was a wine tasting hosted by Wine Knows, a local wine shop in Grayslake owned by Phil and Lawrence. We've only met Phil so far and like him a lot -- he's a pretty cheerful guy with a short Santa Claus-ish beard. Of course, with a wine shop, aren't you pretty much guaranteed to be happy?

The wine tasting was nice, with a good selection of wine and appetizers (I'm afraid I didn't catch who the chef was). Phil had a distributor guy there with him (Mark? Matt? Pretty sure it started with an "M") who was also nice and a real pretty boy (but didn't seem stuck up for all of that) who really knew his wine (definitely a saving grace, like our 6' tall model-looking friend Barb's utter niceness and goofiness--all women would hate her if it weren't for that).

We went by the store the next day and found it to be well stocked and nice. They even have (in stock!) Reynolds Family wines and Darioush (including my only favorite white wine!). We went by again today (Sat the 14th) to pick up the wines we'd ordered from the tasting and found the store awash with people for the Spring Tasting (with most of the women gathered around Mark/Matt's table). Over 80 wines and probably over 100 people were there. Sadly, we'd just had lunch and weren't really prepared to taste any wine. But we'll definitely have to keep an eye open for future events. I think we've found our local wine shop (though no wine shop will ever fully replace Uncorked for us).