Chicago Tribune: Chrishon Lampley on being a black woman in wine: 'You can't tell me I'm a fad'

People still think I’m the promotional girl,” says Chrishon Lampley, owner and creator of Love Cork Screw, a wine and lifestyle brand.

That doesn’t stop Lampley, an African-American woman, from making wine her way.

Joining a predominantly white and male industry means she constantly has to prove herself, Lampley says. “People don’t really believe I own the company, or they question my wine knowledge. As a minority, there’s often a high threshold of showing up and showing off from the get-go.”

In the early 2000s, Lampley co-owned a popular art gallery and event space, Three Peas Art Lounge in the South Loop. While there, she made a name for herself curating the wine list, which inspired her to launch a blog dedicated to wine and Chicago’s art and culture scene called Love Cork Screw. It eventually became a radio show too. A terrible sewage problem and flood forced Three Peas Art Lounge to close and sent Lampley looking for her next act. Wine called, and she answered, launching the wine brand in 2014.

“I’m a comeback kid,” she says. “I went from losing everything to joining an industry that doesn’t look like me, to launching my product in major stores. I don’t stop.”

She recalls a time early in the launch of Love Cork Screw when she landed a retail account that required her to sell out her line within 24 hours to earn continued business. Nearby, jugs of commonly available value wines were literally covered in dust. “The expectations were a little ridiculous.”

For the most part, that’s changed. These days, Lampley’s wines are available in select Mariano’s, Whole Foods and Binny’s stores throughout Chicagoland and recently have been placed in three area Target locations (1 S. State St., 1200 N. Larrabee St., 2656 N. Elston Ave.).

“Growth has been unbelievable,” Lampley says about placing the new accounts. “I have outsold the vineyards I work with to produce my wine — we’ve sold 50,000 bottles since starting.”