Ivy Wheaton festive holiday setting - Orin Swift WBTG

Ivy Restaurant, Wheaton (IL) for a beautiful, festive holiday setting - features Orin Swift WBTG 

For a festive holiday celebration dinner, we dined at Ivy Restaurant in adjacent Wheaton (Illinois). 

I can't imagine a more suitable, beautiful, picturesque setting - an old church sanctuary with a large wood burning fireplace, stained glass, cathedral ceilings and warm wood trim. 

We hosted our family for our gala holiday celebration dinner back in 2016. Having a holiday season dinner at Ivy has been an annual event for many years. 

Knowing we were going different paths for our entree selections, Linda opting for seafood, hence white wine accompaniment, and me going for their BBQ ribs, hence a bold big Red, we didn't bring BYOB, rather, we each ordered WBTG - Wine-By-The-Glass for our individual selections. 

Linda ordered the Parmesan Crusted Herb Salmon served with citrus butter, sautéed green beans, and jasmine rice. For her wine selection she had a glass of Pieper Heidseick Champagne. 

I ordered the Ivy Signature Specialty, Slow Cooked BBQ Ribs with a glass of Orin Swift Abstract. 

Orin Swift Palermo
label - I don't get it.

Ivy feature a WBTG selection from the broad portfolio of Orin Swift wines. I wrote recently about these wines and their weird branding strategy with inventive and sometimes oft-putting, even weird labels. I understand a restaurant featuring a producer with a broad diverse portfolio of wines for their winelist offerings. 

Being focused on, arguably perhaps obsessive in these pages about wine branding and marketing, I find Orin Swift an unfortunate choice for the signature collection for a fine dining restaurant and the imagery and ambiance provided by Ivy. Never-the-less ... case in point ...

Tonight, while the Orin Swift Palermo (shown right) might have been a more suitable wine choice for my entree, the creepy label turns me off, hence, I went for the Abstract Red Blend for my wine choice. 

Orin Swift Abstract Red Blend 2020

This is a diverse blend of Grenache, Syrah and Petite Sirah, sourced from a "patchwork of individual lots that retain some of their character but meld seamlessly together—like the collage"— hence the name abstract and the label, a collage of disparate faces and other imagery artifacts. 

 

Orin Swift prides himself on weirdness, noting he'd rather spend his time in the cellar crafting wines than tending to branding, messaging and promotion.