As the winter holidays approach food and beverages are in the spotlight, especially in a year when the focus has shifted to smaller, more economical gatherings.

Wine often takes center stage — selecting it, serving it, cooking with it, and giving it as a gift. It’s one of the most popular alcoholic beverages in the U.S., but it wasn’t always that way.

The great American love for wine is a recent phenomenon, dating back only to the 1960s, and a trailblazing food writer from Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood had a big role in its resurgence.

The first regular U.S. newspaper column devoted to wine premiered in the Chicago Tribune on Feb. 16, 1962. That column, “So You’d Like to Know Wines!” was written by Ruth Ellen Church, of Beverly. She was wine editor for the Tribune for the next 17 years.

Now, at least 25 days each year celebrate wine, including National Sangria Day on Dec. 20. But before Church started her column, the subject of wine belonged mainly to connoisseurs. Her Tribune column introduced the topic to the public in a creative and innovative way by positioning Church as an “amateur who enjoys and cooks with wine,” consulting with the connoisseurs and recommending resources. The “let’s learn about wine together” approach took away the mystery surrounding the topic for the average consumer.

Church was no stranger to Tribune readers. Since 1936, she was food editor for the paper. She usually wrote under the name “Mary Meade,” the byline the Tribune used for its women food editors for years. This was for convenience; it was a common understanding in the workforce that most women would marry and soon leave their professional jobs.

Church, the fourth Mary Meade, broke that mold. She thrived in the position for 38 years. During that time, she oversaw the largest food staff of any paper in the country. She established a kitchen in the Tribune Tower for recipe testing and food photography. Reviewers, and even competitors, considered Church’s column one of the best in the U.S.

Church combined her journalism career with marriage and motherhood. Born Ruth Ellen Loverien in 1908 in Iowa, she earned a degree in food and nutrition journalism in 1933 from Iowa State University.

In 1942, she married Freeman Sylvester Church, a U.S. Navy lieutenant, and had two sons. She made time to be a Boy Scout den mother and a trustee of the Morgan Park Academy, and when her husband died of a heart attack in 1960 at 52, she carried on as a single parent.

Church wrote the wine column under her own name. Her advice was practical, and reading it more than 50 years later shows it was also timeless.

The first column, which discussed sherry, advised readers not to be confused by all the “nonsense” that entangled wine. It was simple, Church wrote, to go out, buy a bottle of wine, take it home and serve it. If you liked it, write it down for future use. If you didn’t like it, try another kind.

The only equipment needed, advised Church, was a good corkscrew, general purpose wine glasses, and a wine rack. She included recipes for curried shrimp and onion pie, flavored with sherry.

As no surprise, Church wrote many holiday articles about wine. One covered the types of wine to serve with turkey on Thanksgiving. To begin with, Church wrote, it should be an American wine since this was an American holiday. She advised that a dry wine worked best, such as a rose, a white wine, or a light California red.

Another article discussed giving Champagne to a friend as a Christmas gift. Her advice was that other types of bubbly wine, such as a sweet sparkling burgundy, could be a better and less expensive choice. The friend’s individual tastes and lifestyle needed to be considered in making the purchase.

In 1967, Church embarked on a whirlwind culinary and wine tour of Europe, visiting fourteen countries. She shared her experiences in her daily columns as “What’s Cooking in Europe,” featuring recipes she sent home for testing in the Tribune kitchen.

She wrote about the wine industry in each of the countries she visited. She introduced Americans to many European specialties, including sangria from Spain. The recipe she shared was from a hotel in Andalusia and called for one bottle of Spanish rioja, two tablespoons of sugar, four slices of lemon, four sliced peaches (fresh or canned), ice and carbonated water. She wrote that any good red table wine would work, and that most sangrias had simpler blends with lemons and oranges.

In addition to more than a dozen cookbooks, Church wrote four books on wine. She retired as food editor in 1974 and continued the wine column for five more years.

Church’s life came to a tragic end on Aug. 19, 1991, when she was killed in her North Beverly home during a break-in and robbery. The thief bound and gagged her, causing her to suffocate while he ransacked the house. The killer plead guilty and was sentenced to 80 years in prison.

From 1991 to 1998, the Midwest International Wine Exposition, an annual event supported by the Chicago wine and food community, bestowed a Ruth Ellen Church Award for outstanding contributions to wine and food journalism. The first recipient was Craig Claiborne, the famous food editor emeritus of the New York Times, whose career Church helped get started.

Sunday, aka National Sangria Day, offers the perfect occasion to prepare Ruth Ellen Church’s recipe for this traditional Spanish drink, and to then raise a toast to the woman who introduced America to wine.

Carol Flynn is a freelancer.