July 10, 2026
I want to tell you my two favorite stories I learned about Grace Hill Winery in Whitewater, Kansas (approximately 20 minutes north of Wichita).
First, when I visited, Colleen told me (and reminded me) that back in 2023 and 2024, Grace Hill Winery lost more than 85% of their unharvested grapes. That’s tragic. But the events caused it to import some grapes from California (which they still crushed, fermented and aged at Grace Hill) and led to the development of the Pinot Noir, which you can see in the photos. I really enjoyed it! I just think it’s a great story about resilience.
Second, Adam Perkins is the nephew and cousin of the owners, but he is also the Grace Hill Winery Sommelier. And I don’t know if he officially has that title with Grace Hill (online he just refers to himself as the Tasting Room Manager), but he’s legit. He has his WSET Level 4 Diploma in Wines, which is YEARS of work to obtain. According to Google “it is considered the pinnacle of wine education…” He may be the only person in Kansas to have this accolade. So, in laymen’s terms — the dude knows his shit.
I really enjoyed my experience at Grace Hill. In addition to the tasting room, they have an excellent covered patio area that is dog friendly (they even had a “bag” station), second floor patio to get a cool view of the vineyard, several indoor areas to kick back with a bottle of wine (and they even had some live music!). The tasting involved six wines, all of which are ONLY available at the winery. But you can get their standard wines in many liquor stores, at least in Wichita. My personal favorites were the ReViVal, which was a mix of a several Blancs and Riesling, the 2025 Steely Cham, which was a red floral wine and the Pinot Noir, which you know what that is. Actually we ended up buying a bottle of each of those.
If you enjoy wine and have not been to Grace Hill Winery, I swear you will enjoy it. I have been to more vineyards than I can count. Off the top of my head in Napa, Seattle, Amalfi Coast (Italy), Franschhoek (South Africa) and many others that you’d get tired of reading. And I’m saying that it is damn impressive that we have a place like this near the largest city in Kansas.
One final thing — as an aside I want to apologize to Colleen. She has actually invited me out before and she is a Gastrofan. I just genuinely hate introducing myself to people. I don’t care about handouts and I just like being a normal dude. Maybe someday I will get more comfortable introducing myself. But, anyway, yeah. You helped me out by reminding me to get back here. It had been too many years — before I even had a blog.
