The Wine Discount Center‘s Elston Avenue store hosts “a unique and oddly healthy” event Thursday, pairing fruits from Seedling Fruit–fresh, grilled, and in salads, entrees, and desserts–with wines. It starts at 7 PM and costs $25 per person.

Pastoral offers a free tasting Thursday of Point Reyes blue cheese, plus a chance to meet Jill Giacomini-Basch, part of the family that makes the cheese. She’ll be at the Broadway store from 6-8 PM.

Feeling flush? Friday at 7, Eno is opening its three bottles of 1945 Chateau Latour, one of the rarest and most expensive wines in the world. They’re offering 2-ounce and 6-ounce tastings, which will cost $250 and $750, respectively. Reservations are recommended.

Even if a taste of some of the world’s most expensive wine is out of your price range, tasting the most expensive coffee in the world might be feasible. On Saturday at 7 PM at its Roasting Works, Intelligentsia brews the famous Geisha coffee beans from the Hacienda la Esmeralda estate in Panama, for which it paid a record $130 a pound at auction. $25 gets you a taste of the premium coffee and a quarter pound of beans from the same estate, though not the super expensive ones. If you want to buy those, it’ll set you back $55 for a quarter pound or $99 for a half pound.

Oktoberfest, with its brats and beer, is all over Chicago this weekend:

  • The Seventh Annual Oktoberfest Chicago (which used to be called the St. Alphonsus Oktoberfest) is this Friday 5-10 PM, Saturday 11 AM-10 PM, and Sunday 11:30 AM-8 PM in Lakeview and costs $5.
  • First St. Paul’s Oktoberfest at its Evangelical Lutheran Church, Saturday 5-10 PM, includes live polka music by Flechsig’s Oktoberfest Band. It costs $10-25; proceeds benefit First Saint Paul’s ministries.
  • St. Michael’s Oktoberfest is Sunday from noon to 5 PM in Lincoln Park; it’s $10.
  • ELVN’s Oktoberfest, Sunday from 3-7 PM in Wrigleyville, is the only one to boast a pig roast. Its $20-25 entry fee goes to benefit six local charities.

 

The Brookfield Zoo‘s annual Wines in the Wild fund-raiser is Sunday from 4-7 PM at the zoo’s Discovery Center, featuring a tasting of more than 60 wines, hors d’oeuvres, and both a live auction and silent auction. Tickets are $100 per person; proceeds benefit the zoo’s conservation and education programs.

The Highland Park Historical Society hosts a talk Tuesday on Learning to Cook in 1898: A Chicago Culinary Memoir. Presented by author Ellen F. Steinberg and Eleanor Hudera Hanson, it’s at 7 PM in the Highland Park Library auditorium.

Also Tuesday at 7, Next Food Network Stars the Hearty Boys sign their new book, Talk with Your Mouth Full, which provides recipes and catering tips, at Borders on Michigan.