Nine Suns

A winemaker’s hand, held back from the room

Sam Kaplan works as winemaker for Nine Suns in Chicago, a role that places the craft in the cellar even when the venue is classed as a restaurant. His practice is built around vineyard knowledge, cellar judgment, and the finished bottle, not around a visible pass or a named dining-room ritual. That matters here because the most reliable way to read his connection to Nine Suns is through the discipline he brings to wine: fruit handled as site, aroma treated as memory, and decisions made with patience rather than display.

Kaplan’s wider work has kept him moving across vineyards, cellars, and bottles, with responsibilities that sit close to both farming and élevage. His earlier Napa Valley experience included winemaking and vineyard management, and that double view still shapes the way his role is described. He does not appear as a sommelier at the table or a chef at the station. He appears as the maker behind what lands in the glass, where a wine’s line, texture, and sense of place have to be resolved before service ever begins.

The cellar before the counter

The known method around Kaplan is cumulative. He works from vineyard knowledge into cellar practice, holding those tracks together rather than treating them as separate jobs. At Memento Mori his title stays plain, winemaker, and the plainness is useful here as well. It keeps the reader close to the work: picking decisions, fruit character, cellar handling, and the final shape of the bottle. Nine Suns does not publish a Chicago account of its wine program, dining room, or production practice.

What can be said with confidence is narrower, and more valuable than padding. Kaplan’s signature wines elsewhere include 2023 Memento Mori Vine Hill Ranch Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, 2023 Vida Valiente The Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, and 2023 Arkenstone Estate Red Blend. Each name fixes the wine to a place or estate, which is often where his craft starts. The throughline is not a house style imposed on different fruit. It is the slower work of reading site, season, and material closely enough that the finished wine still carries its origin.

What the room can borrow from wine

In a restaurant, wine changes the room without needing to announce itself. It sets the pace between the counter and the table, sharpens a dish, softens a pause, and gives the pass another kind of timing. For Nine Suns, Kaplan’s role suggests that the bottle is not an accessory to the meal. It is part of the method, a craft running parallel to the kitchen rather than behind it.

His own language for wine begins with scent. “It smelled like home, and reminded me of my early childhood.” The line is useful because it does not turn aroma into decoration. It treats aroma as a working tool, one that can bring memory into the glass without loosening the discipline of the craft. That is the register to hold at Nine Suns: the room may be in Chicago, but the hand named here belongs to a winemaker trained by vineyards, cellars, and finished bottles.

A narrow page, deliberately kept narrow

There is no virtue in pretending the bench is visible when it is not. A place page should name the maker, locate the work, and let the craft carry the weight. Here, the clearest craft is Kaplan’s, and the clearest material is wine. Until the house gives more of the room to the public record, the honest close is the bottle rather than the room: Sam Kaplan’s line at Nine Suns.