Are there really wineries in Michigan?

By Dan Herd
Sun contributor
Wine touring in Leelanau County is a religious pilgrimage, involving a group, an ideal, and a passion for the process. It is for this process that we return annually to the Leelanau hills.
With church bells ringing on a recent Sunday, we seven seasoned friends gather at Kejara’s Bridge in Lake Leelanau to start our own spiritual service. Though it is breezy and cool, the humidity waits on us as we drink coffee and plan another tour through the barn-spotted hills.
Sitting in the almost-sun morning, I think about the couple I had conversationally kidnapped two days prior when they asked me the wrong question: how is the wine touring around here? My answer took about 20 minutes. And now, as I wipe the last bit of egg from my plate and walk to the car to start another afternoon sample-sipping local fruit fermentation, the anticipation makes me smile. I want you to understand the answer, to feel the reason and to thirst for the same, yourself.

As we turn onto Lake Leelanau Dr., and look for Otto Rd. I get excited again, maybe because I feel grown up or because I have found another reason why northern Michigan feels endless in its unique beauty. Or I may just like free booze. Every time is different, but the group of people rarely changes. I look around at these friends — all young, knowing almost nothing about wine and not smart enough to censor our distasteful or humorous remarks. Though all from the area, we have acquired a token Californian for the tour to ground our enthusiasm for local wines in the larger scope of the domestic industry.
The local industry started in 1965 with Bernie Rink, proprietor of the Boskydel vineyard. He was laughed at for years, but now, with a dozen other vineyards on the peninsula and thousands of cases in production, people have quit laughing. But, catering more to local customers than drunken tourists like us, Bernie cares none for regular business hours. Boskeydel is closed this Sunday morning.
Undaunted, we head towards Black Star Farms and turn into the driveway, which bends past sandy Maple trees and an arching hill of ripening white grapes. The Farms are a showcase for local products and potentials. I don’t know what that means but I like it. With a bed & breakfast, local cheeses and chocolates, a horse stable, and a summer full of weddings, the grounds are always teeming with customers, employees and events. Fun stuff, but we have a mission.
After Dianne, the lovely and well-informed immigrant from da U.P. takes our $5 (yes some of the wineries charge you to taste, though it was always worth it) she sets us upon the huge selection of wines. We sip, scribble, and talk snootily about “body”, “finish”, and any other funny words we can think of while gazing around the large room. All are drinkable, but the Arcturos Pinot Noir with its surprisingly large body gets the most smiles and nods. The Rosé is a great beach wine, and the grappa — an Italian digestive liquor that tastes like farm-rich fermented dung — led one of our budding sommeliers to state, “you could clean wounds with it”. With a loaf of Stonehouse bread and local Roclette cheese, I would enjoy hours at Black Star cleaning my wounds.
After purchasing a few selections we drive back up the hill to L. Mawby. Though the area may produce good grapes, it is through the mad genius of Larry Mawby that such fine sparkling wines (not champagnes!) are made. Our group may not appreciate fully the subtleties of good sparkling wines (not champagnes!) but we like the bubbles in our noses. After tasting a few of the more expensive varietals, we agree that the Sandpiper, a $10 bottle is one of our favorites. Gwen, who also pours at Bel Lago, is full of wine knowledge, but more importantly she answers all our questions, responds to my stupid comments about why they carbonate wine, and remembers what each person had tried and liked. We drink deeply. This is why we search, but wine tasting is larger than us. More complete than the crispness of a stainless steel Gris, or the difference between two local Cherry wines, tasting embodies our re-grounding in the localness, in the highest art of fruit production.
With its sandy soil and quick summers, northern Michigan has thwarted farmers since they first started tilling the area in 1852. Potato fields perished, vegetable gardens frosted over in July, and grain crops could not mature before the fall’s bitter nights began their nine-month reign. But fruit: apricots, peaches, apples, cherries and grapes grow well in these oak-crested rolling hills. We drink in the fermented fruit of another northern Michigan success. It tastes of triumph and love.
In this vein, Ciccone vineyards — which we call Madonna’s Father, referring to the owner’s famous daughter — has found local success. For the past few years we have been unimpressed with the selection, but last year was one of surprise. The gewürztraminer, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay were all superb. This year, though, they were less impressive, with only four wines and a Pinot Noir that tasted “fishy” to three of us.
As we step from the air conditioning of Ciccone, the heat and humidity that we had felt increase gradually, slams through us, rushing at the several patrons still inside. We stumble around the grounds for a while, gazing through the heat fog that clouds the usually spectacular view and take random photos. Not beach weather, but the heat and companionship make the air reek of summer.
Just down hilltop road is Willow, our fourth winery. We pause for a picture among the perfectly parallel rows of grapes, and I linger behind a minute to look at the fruit, waiting to be pressed, barreled, bottled and poured. The front of the pouring room is crowded with lavender, which tumbles onto the stone steps. I come through the doorway of the wine tasting room into a conversation between my sister and her long-time friend. The conversation is about sweat, fans and the cutting edge ways of keeping yourself cool on hot Michigan days such as this. John, the wine pourer enters our conversation effortlessly, mentioning Lance Armstrong’s seventh Tour de France win and the controversy over new wine distribution laws before checking our ID’s and pouring us the first of their four selections. (Michigan alcohol distributors are lobbying politicians in the state capitol in Lansing with a smear campaign against wineries to secure exclusive distribution rights, even though the prices they charge locals wineries to distribute their own products could send the wineries out of business. — Ed.)
The wine here at willow characterizes the subtlety of the local landscape. Like John, the wine is multidimensional, refined and yet capable of just having a good time. The tastes don’t attack you but ask you to put your feet in, wiggle them around, and find pleasure in its cool, clear character, just like Michigan’s sugar-sand beaches. Maybe because of this, the Californian in our group makes icky faces at all four samples. California wines, dominating the market for the past decade, are Evangelists. They tell you what to taste and push strong oak resins through you, and all the tannin you could wrap up in this newspaper. Michigan wines are unimposing, like Lutherans. But once you enter into the conversation, ask a few questions and pour a second glass, their character emerges, bright and complete.
In a conversation of this sort, we arrive at Shady Lane, a group favorite for the large samples, consistent quality and attentiveness of the pourers. We also love the wine room, because it is shelled in stone, covered on the inside by all light woods and vaulted ceilings with two levels and a back patio. The farm feel, suggested by the large barn and encircling orchards, creates a contrast between the idyllic process we carry out and the reality of local production. For those of us who will stay in the area, living in Michigan is an act of repudiation. Survival jobs are common throughout the area with many locals getting by on seasonal work.
While wine touring we are shown the pinnacle of local living: to produce from the land a great fruit nectar, full of pressurized anticipation waiting under a cork stopper.
In the same way that new arrivals to the area become stunned by the combination of beaches, farms, lakes and tress, so too are we winos surprised by the crisp subtleness of an L. Mawby Sandpiper and the leathery, organic undertones of a Shady Lane Chardonnay.
We finish the day, a few to head back to evening commitments, a few to continue up the coast toward the new tastes at Gill’s Pier and the well-known lushness of Chateau Fontaine. But the afternoon was crowned a success even before we left the chiming bells in Lake Leelanau.
Wine touring in northern Michigan is not just about wine, just as potluck dinners are not just about food. It is about process and people, reconnection and recommitment. A recommitment to enjoy, not just use and a reconnection with those we gradually start to take for granted. Wine touring is about the process of taking an afternoon, rainy or bright and drinking deeply from what makes this the most beautiful place on Earth.