The Holly Hill Wine Guild
“Wine is meant to be with food - that's the point of it.” Julia Child
When Chris and Ouita Michel opened the Holly Hill Inn in 2001, they did a lot of things differently.
Chef Ouita composed a seasonal prix fixe menu, popular in Europe but seldom seen in the states. She served everyone the same number of courses and offered guests a choice of dishes in each one.
She often said it didn’t make sense to go out to dinner and not have the whole experience. So all our dinners at Holly Hill began with an amuse-bouche (literally amuse the mouth!) gift from the kitchen and were served in three courses ~ salad or appetizer, entree and dessert.
And every dinner menu was accompanied by a carefully crafted three-glass wine flight, another rarity at the time. Chris has a nose for good wines and he put his sommelier training to good work on the Holly Hill Inn wine list. Our list has received the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence for 21 consecutive years.
Chris says in the very beginning “we were determined to be ‘different’ at Holly Hill ~ to provide an experience unlike any other restaurant in the area. When we opened, we had a very small wine list, limited by storage space and budget. This made the selection of each wine important, for we could have no wine that was less than perfect!”
Not only perfect, but reasonably priced. After sampling many wines, their first lists were quirky collections of unusual wines. Sparkling wine from New Mexico, dry Riesling from Australia, Chardonnay from Oregon, Cabernet from Argentina, Viognier from France, Gamay from California. There was a special emphasis on winemakers like Robert Sinskey and Giorgio Rivetti, small-scale, independent producers with family-owned vineyards.
Now with over 300 wines, the Holly Hill wine list allows our guests to tour the world of wine on paper with each new menu. As Chris admitted, “when we taste a great wine it is often hard to resist buying it! Our wine inventory is full of wines we love to drink.”
“Tasting a wine often sparks a conversation of what foods would be a good match, which dishes on the menu would go well with this wine, or what menu we could create to do a great wine justice.”
Along the way, we realized our guests were having as much fun learning about wine as we were, and so the concept of a Holly Hill Wine Guild was born. We believe wine should be as much a part of the meal as the food, another ingredient to round out the experience. The Wine Guild allows us to express this love of wine, and to share it in a convivial, unpretentious setting.
It began with intercollegiate debate. When Chef Ouita was a senior at the University of Kentucky in 1986, she won the National Debate Championship, under the coaching of Roger Solt, now her business partner at Holly Hill.
Ouita had long been friends with another former UK debater, from a prior winning team, and she knew how much he loved good wine and sharing his knowledge of it with others. So, in August 2008, Steve Mancuso introduced the Holly Hill Wine Guild as a wine appreciation group for our regular guests.
As a former academic, Steve’s favorite aspect of the Wine Guild is that it’s “strictly about education and appreciation.” Members meet monthly to learn about wines, winemakers, winemaking regions and winemaking techniques. Each year, Steve prepares a tasting curriculum with themes designed to explore a wide range of wines.
Steve says he looks for “new and important themes to explore from the ever-changing wine industry. I try to convey the wine's story through research on its relevant history, geography, climate, winemaking methods, etc.”
According to Steve, the Guild has “tasted about a thousand wines over the years representing more than a dozen countries and 100 regions. I couldn’t begin to add up the grape varietals we’ve tried.”
It’s an approach with staying power. Some Guild members have been attending Steve’s seminars since 2008 and several have traveled together informally to California, New York, France, Oregon, Italy and Washington State. When Covid-19 prevented in-person gatherings, Wine Guild members picked up bottles of wine at Holly Hill Inn and Steve conducted tastings via Zoom.
In 2021, Chef Ouita and Steve decided to move the guild’s monthly tastings to the spacious Pavilion Bar at Lexington’s Fasig-Tipton Thoroughbred Sales Company, a location which could accommodate the Guild’s growing size.
Today the Wine Guild counts more than 60 card-carrying members, who comprise a large part of the 100+ participants active in Guild events, the highest number ever. Wine Guild members live throughout central Kentucky, from Richmond to Versailles. Their vocations are equally varied: architects, attorneys, schoolteachers, academics, doctors, musicians, horse farm owners and more.
Steve has another great program planned for 2022, including a members-only Italian wine dinner at Holly Hill Inn on January 27. In February, the Guild will explore new trends in Argentine Malbecs. And look for Steve and Chef Ouita to incorporate more wine and food events into the Guild calendar.
Guild tasting seminars are open to the public, space permitting. Members receive discounts and other perks, including reservation priority and first notice of special events. A limited number of yearly memberships are available. We hope you’ll join us to raise a glass to the partnership of great food, wine and friends.
© 2022, Holly Hill Inn/Ilex Summit, LLC and its affiliates, All Rights Reserved
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