by Brandon
May 16, 2009 11:45 PM
A few weeks ago, my girlfriend, June, and a co-worker of hers were discussing places around the Springfield area for dancing. Before you assume anything, we're talking about traditional ballroom, swing and other contemporary dancing here?not bumpy, grindy, everyone's a 21-year-old club dancing. That got June to looking at DancingDates.com, a site hosted by my friend & co-worker Steve. It's updated frequently, so check it out. She stumbled across an event at a winery just outside of Oakford, IL on the 9th, so we decided to check it out.
The location was the Hill Prairie Winery, which is located just off of Route 97 to the east of Oakford. The drive from Springfield (about one hour each way) was great, thanks mainly to the beautiful weather that day. This event was part of a wine dinner/dance indoor series that was held once a month from January to May as way to break the boredom of winter. We were lucky enough to catch the last one. I imagine their events throughout the summer will take place outside in a covered area they have set up near the main building.
The night's dinner was tapas plus three drink tickets each, good for any choice of wine, beer or soda they had. The "tapas" was really closer to Mexican buffet, but it didn't matter to us because it was still really good. I definitely got our money's worth out of it 
. Since it was buffet style, we got our pick of whatever wines we wanted to try. Normally, the winery staff gives you a few choices of wines that are pre-picked to best complement the meal. The band (sorry, didn't catch their name!) played a number of covers that you might hear from similar sized bands. Once dinner was over, though, they kicked it up and really started going. We didn't stick around for much dancing, however, because we wanted to get back to Springfield to catch Silly Joel at The Plaza.
We had a great time at Hill Prairie Winery and would like to go back sometime. The food and the wine, of course, were great. They even put on murder mystery dinners throughout the year (check their Web site), which we'd really like to go to. We went to our first in San Diego a few years ago and had a blast.