GALION –Historic Brownella Cottage will “toast” the holiday season when it opens its doors for a special inaugural event on Saturday, Dec. 11.

The cottage, 132 South Union Street, will be the site of a Holiday Cookie & Wine Pairing Tour, which is being planned by the Galion History Center. It’s a first for the organization, formerly known as the Galion Historical Society.

“The house is never more beautiful than at Christmastime,” said Tanesha Pickering, the History Center’s executive director. “We are definitely excited about it. We’ll see how it turns out, and hopefully, it becomes an annual event for us.”

The Galion History Center, rebranded as such last July 1, has teamed up with two Galion businesses, Cake & Icing Bakery and Fox Winery, to supply an array of holiday cookies for the event, as well as a variety of locally produced wines, Pickering said.

For a $25 ticket, each guest will have the opportunity to sample four cookie and wine pairings, each one set up in a different parlor of Brownella. A card will then get punched at each station as they make their way through the 1887 home, she said.

The idea for a Cookie & Wine Pairing Tour has been in the works since summer, Pickering said, when she discovered a pinboard on the Pinterest lifestyle website. “I got to thinking, that’s kind of interesting and cool. How can we do this in Galion?”

Tours that day are scheduled for 5:00, 6:00, and 7:00 p.m. History Center members are entitled to a $5 discount on the admission price, she said, with everyone attending getting a complimentary wine glass to commemorate the occasion.

Brownella, the former home of Bishop William Montgomery Brown and his wife, Ella, is already being decorated for the Christmas season by about a dozen volunteers, Pickering said, who select a theme and light up a tree in each room of the iconic house.

Proceeds from the Cookie & Wine fund-raiser will go into the History Center’s general fund, Pickering said. “We always have preservation needs with five historic buildings to maintain in town.”

Tickets are available online at www.galionhistory.com/events.