Many attendees at the 9th Annual World of Wine Festival in Jacksonville will visit Bigham Knoll’s expansive grassy campus for the first time. That’s crazy. Fun stuff happens here all year round.

But before I come off as all-knowing, I'll admit I’m new to the Knoll. Until I heard that the WOW Festival was moving to this historic hilltop site, I had never traveled up the long driveway or entered the ballroom-like assembly room or sat at one of the picnic tables.

I didn’t know the former school campus had an active brewhaus where Jagdwurst, butterkase and Doppelbock are served under umbrellas outside or inside on sturdy wood tables that still sport the dents earned from decades of students abusing them in woodshop classes.

I didn’t know the dozens of modern-day preschoolers I saw trailing behind their teachers are continuing the tradition of education that started on this spot in 1867. And I didn’t know the headquarters of a powerful global investment strategy firm is secured behind towering glass doors inside a renovated 1908 brick schoolhouse.

What I also learned by touring the seven-acre property in June with owner Brooke Ashland is she’s gearing up for four days of WOW parties, all with a mission to educate patrons about wine: from a reception to wine classes.

During the Friday night gala dinner, Brooke and her daughter Hilary Kemmling, who is the chef of Frau Kemmling Schoolhaus Brewhaus on the campus, have plans to seduce guests in the ballroom with appetizers paired with gold-medal winning wines. Top local chefs will introduce the courses. And video profiles of the winemakers and food providers will loop on large video screens.

Saturday's finale will showcase the Grand Tasting, in which 700 people will gather under a giant tent on the Bigham Knoll campus lawn near newly planted Tempranillo vines, and taste 150 different wines made from Southern Oregon grapes.

Brooke has been busy gracefully restoring the historic buildings. The fabled bell tower that was removed a half-century ago has been rebuilt (the bell rang when a peace treaty ended WWI). Rooms that were once clumsily divided into claustrophobic cubbyholes have been returned to their original sun-speckled spaces. Fir floors have been refinished to sock-sliding smoothness.

WOW Festival events will give old-timers an opportunity to revisit their alma mater and remember how the boys used a blown-up hog bladder for a football. Or the principal was given the skeleton of a prisoner to display in anatomy classes. Or that high school delinquents dug out a much-needed basement while serving detention.

First-timers without any old stories will create new ones.

Welcome to a new chapter for Bigham Knoll.

Readers, we want to hear from you. What is your favorite story about Bigham Knoll and Jacksonville? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below (yes, you have to register but it only takes a minute, honest.)