Organic Beers, Organic Wines, Organic Good Times

Sweet Dreams Organic Bakery at 1107 Waukegan Rd. in Glenview has been offering North Shore foodies with some of the most diverse and reliable organic meals for the last eight years. Whether patrons want a cup of coffee and pastry to start the day, or a quiche for lunch, the place has something for just about every craving. 

And now, at long last, the cafe has rounded out their menu even more, offering organic beer and wine for the first time. 

"This is a big deal for us, we just feel like we're expanding," said executive chef, Martha Sutton. "You can actually come in here and know everything you order is organic."

Owner Mary Sopcic said customers were asking for it, but Sweet Dreams had to be certain any additions to the menu met the cafe's strict standards.

"We don't compromise on anything here," Sopcic said. "You can have organic grapes and not organic wine because of sulfites."

Sopcic said finding the right wines wasn't too hard, and added eight varieties of red and whites made from organic grapes with no added sulfites — a type of acid that can occur naturally, but gets added to lots of commercial wine as a preservative.

Glasses of wine range from $7.00 to $8.50, or by the bottle at $20.00 to $24.00.

Finding organic beer was a bit harder, but two British ales at $7.00 for a .5-liter bottle is now available too.

Patch was offered a sampling of two wines and one of the beers, along with some food pairings to illustrate the meal options now available at Sweet Dreams. 

Chances are, connoisseurs will be pleased with the drinks — they taste exactly as beer and wine should. Casual drinkers probably won't even notice the subtle differences, if they're even there. 

Only the red wine, an Agriculturist Mendocino, seemed to have a light, earthy note that didn't seem typical to most red wines. But that might actually be the difference of a sulfite-free wine. Certainly not bad, but somehow new.

"I think you have to get used to these wines if all you drink is with sulfites," Sopcic said

According to Sutton, Sweet Dreams' strict emphasis on organic food was inspired by the nature of today's non-organic industry standards.  

"We're really starting to understand what's going on out there is not good," she said.

It's not just corn feeding cows or pumping them with hormones to boost milk production, or even the chemical treatment of most strawberries, Sutton says "it's really shocking what happens in the food industry."

But she doesn't say that to disparage other restaurants.

"Often the cooking aspect is great, but how the food is raised is the problem," Sutton said. "The sad thing is, you don't know what's in your food. I really love restaurants that say where they sourced their products."

Both Sopcic and Sutton say they were taught to cook by their families, and that shaped their mission at Sweet Dreams. 

"We're trying to go back to how food used to be before the industries started altering it," Sutton said. "You can come in here and know you're not being poisoned somehow."