Joliet winery will put home of brewmaster and bishops on display

Phil Soto enjoys showing people around the house that once belonged to a brewmaster, later was home to bishops and now is the prominent feature of a winery he and partners hope to open in coming months.

“The Castle will be opened as soon as we get the state license,” Soto said.

The state liquor license is pending. Joliet issued a liquor license in December.

“The Castle” is the name that people in the neighborhood gave to the house years ago and which Soto and his partners in the Bishop’s Hill Winery have adopted.

Built of limestone and featuring turrets and other medieval features, the house captured the imagination of neighborhood kids.

The current owners expect it to have a similar appeal to the wine-drinking public.

“This is all very expensive quarter-sawn oak,” Soto said as he walked on the wood floors inside.

The Diocese of Joliet, the previous owners of the campus at Summit and Bridge streets, had carpeted all the floors, Soto said, showing some photos before the restoration.

“There was so much glue on the floor that we weren’t even sure what we had there,” he said. “Luckily, they didn’t paint the woodwork.”

Some of the restored interior was put together with remnants from past decades.

“They didn’t throw anything out. Those columns were up in the attic,” Soto said, pointing to one feature on the first floor and then pounding on a very solid wall. “These walls – these are plaster on brick.”

Downstairs, Soto pointed to a Diocese of Joliet tribunal sign on one of the walls of exposed brick.

“That was the original sign on the front of the building,” he said, noting that the bishop at one point moved out of The Castle and it was used as an office building for the diocese tribunal.

Upstairs, Soto showed a remnant from the origins of the house when it was built in 1890 for brewer Fred Sehring and his family.

“This used to be the maid’s room,” he said, showing off an antique claw-foot tub available for brides if they need it while getting ready for weddings the winery hopes to host.

“The diocese left that,” Soto said of the tub. “That was sitting in a garage in one of the other buildings. We thought we could use that.”

The winery group not only has been making use of remnants from the past but uncovering it as well.

Passersby can see two exposed tunnels behind large piles of rock downhill from The Castle.

The rock and tunnels were buried when the original brewery was torn down in 1910 and were uncovered by the new owners.

Bishop’s Hill Winery will open as a work in progress.

The group plans to reassemble the piles of limestone into a new building where wine will be made.

“We want to eventually be at 60,000 bottles a year,” Soto said.

Having been wine-making hobbyists for years, the Bishop’s Hill Winery group has connections to California, from which they will get their grapes. There will be a vineyard on site.

“It will be more for show, or we’ll crush them and make sangria,” Soto said.

The building made from the old limestone will connect to the former chancery building erected in 1970 by the diocese for its offices.

The group plans to renovate the chancery building for event space, wine processing and a wine store, pending council approval of a rezoning.

The Zoning Board of Appeals recommended approval of the rezoning last week, with Chairman Ed Hennessy remarking on the property: “They used to have a lot of beer. Now we’re going to have wine.”