Belgian and specialty beer importer Shelton Brothers has scheduled its annual Zwanze Day celebration at West Lakeview Liquors for September 20th — part of a worldwide specialty release party involving famed Belgian brewery Cantillon.
The celebration, now in its sixth year, showcases a one-of-a-kind beer from Cantillon brewed specially for the event. Past beers have been brewed with the likes of rhubarb, elderflower and red wine grapes. Details of this year’s recipe haven’t been released.
Whether or not Chicago would host a Zwanze Day celebration came into question months ago after Shelton Brothers had a falling out with their distributor Lakeshore Beverage. Shelton Brothers stopped sending beer to Lakeshore, which is a combination of wholesaler’s River North and City Beverage, once the merger of the two became official.
Shelton Brothers has remained mum on why they’re cutting ties with Lakeshore Beverage. We initially reported on this last month and reached out to Shelton Brothers then for comment. They didn’t respond initially but later shot back on Twitter that they couldn’t comment.
We emailed Jordan DeFrank, PR Director at Shelton Brothers, regarding Zwanze Day who promptly responded that they couldn’t comment further other than to say an announcement about a new Chicago distributor would be happening soon and that they hope to have more information at a later date.
We suspect we’ll hear something by September 20th, otherwise Zwanze Day wouldn’t be happening in Chicago.