Wichita's Midwest Winefest loses its wine provider in 'moral and ethical' disagreement

The organizers of Wichita’s annual Midwest Winefest, a 23-year-old fundraiser that benefits Guadalupe Clinic, will have to find a new wine distributor and some new volunteers to staff the event this year after parting ways with two of its original partners.

Standard Beverage, a Wichita liquor distributor that has provided the wines for the event’s “grand tasting” since Winefest started in 1996, will not work with the festival this year, said the company’s chief financial officer, Angie Wilhelm. Though they’d planned to continue the partnership indefinitely, she said, the company took issue with a recent decision made by the executive director of the festival’s organizer and beneficiary, Guadalupe Clinic, not to invite back certain restaurants and bars to participate in the Winefest this year.

Among those businesses, she said the company learned, were bars and restaurants that had an LGBTQ clientele.

The Guadalupe Clinic, part of the Catholic Diocese of Wichita, provides medical services to uninsured people in the community. The Midwest Winefest is the clinic’s biggest fundraiser and, its leaders say, it brings in about $450,000 each year.

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