(ChicagoBusiness) - Deidre McGraw never thought she would join a wine club. Then, in 2011, she had dinner at Cooper's Hawk in Oak Lawn. After the meal, the server pitched McGraw on the restaurant's wine club. The deal: $35.99 a month for two bottles (choice of red, white or sweet). Free tastings in the wine rooms at any of Cooper's Hawk's 20 locations. Four-course, members-only wine dinners for $65 a person, all inclusive.

“My initial thought was, 'This is too good to be true,' ” says McGraw, 49, a technical analyst. The server wasn't pushy — “I don't like to feel pressured into making a decision,” McGraw says — so she signed up.

Five years later, McGraw, who lives in Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood, remains a happy member, visiting the Oak Lawn or Orland Park Cooper's Hawk restaurant to fetch her two bottles and typically staying for some food and a glass of wine. Membership, she says, has boosted her knowledge of wine and her knack for pairing food with it.

McGraw is one of the approximately 163,000 members of Cooper's Hawk Wine Club, most likely the largest winery-based wine club in the country. For comparison's sake, the club at V. Sattui Winery in St. Helena, Calif., has 6,000 members, 30,000 if the count includes those who buy at least a case regularly, a V. Sattui spokeswoman says.

With bottle prices averaging $19 and just a few in the $40 range, Cooper's Hawk Wine Club is unlike most — such as Napa Valley Reserve, where bottles are pricey and members (reportedly including Gov. Bruce Rauner) pay $100,000 and up to join.

Also unlike most wine clubs, the wines are made in Illinois — at Cooper's Hawk headquarters in Countryside. “It is surprising,” says Lucy Murillo, who joined the club in July after having dinner at the Burr Ridge location. “I was like, 'Chicago, Illinois, wines — it doesn't go,' ” says Murillo, 30, practice manager at Chicago Health Medical Group in River Grove. “That's what pushed me to sign up.”

Launched in 2005

Cooper's Hawk founder and CEO Tim McEnery launched the club in 2005 when he opened the first restaurant, in Orland Park.

Cooper's Hawk now has 20 locations — seven in the suburbs, one in Springfield and the remainder in Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida and Virginia. The restaurants, each of which seats about 300 people, have a Cheesecake Factory-like feeling, with a menu of American dinnerhouse staples — burgers, entree salads, flatbreads, and grilled meats and seafood — served in doggie-bag-size portions. The restaurants gross upward of $8 million in average unit sales; systemwide sales for calendar 2014 were $140 million.