For the ninth straight year, October is Dining Month on OnMilwaukee, presented by the restaurants of Potawatomi Hotel & Casino. All month, we're stuffed with restaurant reviews, dining guides, delectable features, chef profiles and unique articles on everything food, as well as voting for your "Best of Dining 2015."
It’s an all-too common experience. You’re attending an event – maybe at a stadium, concert hall or theater – and you order a glass of wine, which is served up in a disposable wide-rimmed plastic cup.
If so, you’ve probably noticed that the wine – no matter how good – just never tastes the same as when it’s served in proper glassware.
Enter HaloVino, a Milwaukee-based startup run by respected Milwaukee sommelier and wine educator Jessica Bell.
Starting today on Kickstarter, HaloVino will launch a brand new shatterproof, stackable, stemless wine glass which not only offers up a convenient way to serve wine at a casual event, but also optimizes the aromas of the wine itself.
"Wide-rimmed, small plastic cups make my $15 wine smell and taste like a $5 wine," says Bell.
Up until today, Govino has been the leader in manufacturing of shatterproof wine glasses. However, its product has also been expensive. HaloVino aims to offer up an alternative at one-fourth of the cost (under $1 per glass).
HaloVino glassware’s patent-pending two-piece design snaps easily together for a watertight seal and a halo-like effect around the center of a stemless wine glass. This unmatched design also allows up to 10 glasses to be stacked neatly and efficiently.
HaloVino launches today on Kickstarter with a campaign goal of $15,000 to fund tooling for its initial production run. The new HaloVino glasses will be available for pre-sale on Kickstarter, along with a number of unique wine experiences perfect for holiday gifting, such as live online wine classes, extravagant dinners and VIP tailgating outings with Bell as the guide.
Bell, who is also a working mother with two children, has also made a pledge to use the profits from HaloVino for good.
During HaloVino’s product development stage, her son Roger – a little boy she describes as "a gift" – became very ill with a genetic disorder. As a result, Bell decided to use HaloVino as a mechanism to shine light on the lives of other sick children, pledging to donate 20 percent of profits to fund research supporting solutions to childhood cancer and genetic disorders.
For more information, and to support the campaign, visit Kickstarter.com.
As a passionate champion of the local dining scene, Lori has reimagined the restaurant critic's role into that of a trusted dining concierge, guiding food lovers to delightful culinary discoveries and memorable experiences.
Lori is an avid cook whose accrual of condiments and spices is rivaled only by her cookbook collection. Her passion for the culinary industry was birthed while balancing A&W root beer mugs as a teenage carhop, fed by insatiable curiosity and fueled by the people whose stories entwine with every dish. Lori is the author of two books: the "Wisconsin Field to Fork" cookbook and "Milwaukee Food". Her work has garnered journalism awards from entities including the Milwaukee Press Club. In 2024, Lori was honored with a "Top 20 Women in Hospitality to Watch" award by the Wisconsin Restaurant Association.
When she’s not eating, photographing food, writing or planning for TV and radio spots, you’ll find Lori seeking out adventures with her husband Paul, traveling, cooking, reading, learning, snuggling with her cats and looking for ways to make a difference.
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