More than 20 regional beverage producers will pour craft beer, wine, spirits, ciders, seltzers, herbal teas, and artisan coffee at Grafton Winery The Vineyards on Saturday, Sept. 12, as Great Rivers & Routes hosts its third annual Craft Beverage Festival from noon to 5 p.m. The event, which honors local makers, folds in culinary vendors alongside the drink lineup, giving ticket holders more than 50 sample options across the single-day gathering.
The festival is being hosted by Fox 2 as part of its Keepin' It Local coverage, and it brings together craft beer, wine, spirits and more under one roof at the winery's vineyard property. Featured 2026 participants include Alton's Old Bakery Beer Company, Collinsville's Old Herald Brewery & Distillery, Staunton's Mississippi Culture Oak Fermented Ales, Eckert's Orchard ciders, and Grafton Winery itself, according to Great Rivers & Routes. Attendees can expect specialty pours like Oktoberfest lagers, horseradish vodka, and Vignoles wines from the participating makers.
Ticket Tiers and a Sold-Out VIP Option
Advance pricing for the 2026 festival was set at $45 for general admission and $50 at the door, with designated-driver tickets running $25 in advance and $30 at the door, per the same tourism bureau listing. A $65 VIP pass offered noon entry along with a goodie bag containing Grafton Winery wine and Eckert's apple butter jam, and those VIP passes sold out ahead of the event, pointing to strong regional interest in the tasting.
A Vineyard Built for Large-Scale Events
The festival's host site, Grafton Winery The Vineyards, sits at 21028 Eckert Orchard Road and includes an 11,000-square-foot production facility and tasting room, a 5,000-square-foot pavilion, and a 4-acre vineyard, according to Enjoy Illinois. The winery originally opened in downtown Grafton at the former Grafton Elementary School site before expanding to The Vineyards near Eckert's Orchard to house its larger fermentation tanks and event space, per The Grafton Winery. That dual-site growth mirrors Grafton's broader identity as a river town where multiple wineries now operate along the bluffs where the Mississippi and Illinois rivers meet — the same stretch of riverfront Hoodline covered earlier this year in its report on Grafton's year-round ferry launch.
Part of a Bigger Tourism Push
The Craft Beverage Festival isn't a standalone tasting event so much as one piece of a coordinated regional tourism strategy. Tourism across the six-county Great Rivers & Routes region generated $827 million in local economic impact in 2023, supporting $31.6 million in local tax revenue and 6,218 hospitality jobs, according to a Great Rivers & Routes press release. Direct travel spending across the region again topped $827 million in 2024, this time supporting $203.2 million in travel and hospitality payroll across the bureau's 39 member municipalities, as reported by RiverBender.
Great Rivers & Routes traces back to 1985, when it launched as the Alton Regional Convention and Visitors Bureau before rebranding under its current name in 2018 to represent 39 communities across Madison, Macoupin, Montgomery, Jersey, Calhoun, and Greene counties, plus East St. Louis. The bureau also picked up state backing for its outreach efforts: in November 2024, the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity awarded it $228,127 in International Tourism Grant funding, according to the State of Illinois, aimed at marketing the region to travelers from countries including Canada, Mexico, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
Local Makers Lean on Collaboration
Regional craft breweries under the Great Rivers & Routes banner regularly team up on joint marketing, including annual Craft Beer Week campaigns and collaboration brews such as Something in Common, a signature Illinois Common beer produced across member breweries. That kind of cross-promotion has become a common survival tool for small-town producers trying to pull drive-to visitors away from nearby St. Louis, and events like the Craft Beverage Festival give those independent breweries, distilleries, and wineries a shared stage to reach regional crowds all in one afternoon.
