Six months into his tenure at Ozaukee Country Club (Mequon, Wis.), Jack Wagner (a C+RC 40 Under 40 alum and the winning apprentice during the 2025 Chef of the Year competition) has wrapped his third wine dinner, and he’s readying two more in the next two months.
The club has over 400 members and does around $1.6 million in annual food and beverage revenue. Wagner works with a relatively small culinary team: four cooks and two salaried staff.
“Making relationships with the team and building that foundation was important for me,” Wagner says. “I have a really good CDC and sous chefs, and I’ve been relying on them to help me take this program to the next level.”
And the club’s membership is largely on board.
“I took over for someone who was there for 27 years,” Wagner notes. “Some don’t want to see change, and others want more change. [Overall, though], the response has been great. We’re doing action stations, and we’re out there in front of membership, trying to be as front and center as we can be because we know how important that is.”
Prior to joining Ozaukee, Wagner spent two-and-a-half years at Brentwood Country Club. But wine dinners weren’t as prominent there, given the Los Angeles club’s location and its proximity to Michelin-starred restaurants.
“But in the Midwest,” Wagner says, “wine is king.”
Ozaukee does about six wine dinners per year, though Wagner aims to do more. The most recent wine dinner was al fresco, on the golf course, for about 30 guests.
“I cooked everything outside,” he says. “It [requires] a lot of planning—how are you going to keep purees hot, and do you have enough equipment? … We started planning this weeks in advance because of the extensiveness of doing a kitchen outside. It’s a whole different way of cooking.”
It’s worth it, though, to give members and staff a unique experience.
“We have a beautiful club,” Wagner notes. “But we only get four or five good months of weather here. So I love to do the dinners outside where we can utilize the great outdoors, the beautiful golf course, and showcase these Midwest sunsets.”
Game On
For this outdoor dinner, Wagner took the lead in planning after the club’s F&B director departed mid-season and his CDC was away.
“I ended up working with the rep to finalize this dinner and to put it all together,” he says.
Tastings for the July wine dinner started in early June.
“I reached out to the reps and said, ‘Send me all the information you have. The more information, the better.’ And then I researched [the wines] in my own time. I went through my books, I pulled up The Flavor Bible, I looked at what’s in season—all before I tasted the wines. Then once I’d tasted them, I’d think, how close was I? Maybe I tasted something that I wasn’t expecting. It gives me a new perspective.”
Because he hadn’t done many Spanish wine dinners, Wagner tasted a whole profile of wines to ensure he was fully familiar and had the pairings just right.
“There were some good ones that I had to turn away to make sure that we were really choosing the correct wines for the food that we wanted to prepare,” he says.
Two-and-a-half weeks before the wine dinner, he shared a variation of the menu with the members who’d be attending.
“I want them to know what they’re eating,” Wagner says, to glean dietary restrictions and aversions, “but I leave it vague; I just had pictures of the animal. They didn’t really know what was on the menu, but they knew the proteins. As long as they were okay with eating octopus and Hamachi, it was game on.”
In addition to his upcoming wine dinners, Wagner’s planning to host chef’s tables in the club’s newly renovated kitchen. He’s already getting requests from members.
“Those will start once golf season ends and I can catch my breath a little bit,” he says. “I want to give it the attention and time that it deserves.”
