Glen Arbor Wines: where the two peninsulas meet
By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor
Lissa Edwards can remember Glen Arbor before it had sidewalks, or much asphalt. “Everything smelled like hot sand and sumac,” she laughs, over a glass of Chardonnay. “Every once in a while a certain smell takes me back to those days. I spent every summer in Glen Arbor in the 1960s. This town is deep in my DNA.”
Edwards’ grandparents built the Soda Shoppe, now called the Western Avenue Grill, and they stayed on the second floor while visiting on weekends from Ypsilanti, where her father got his PhD from the University of Michigan. Then, in 1964, dad got a Fulbright to study in Paris. France and its morning baguettes, and Glen Arbor and its Sleeping Bear Bay breeze, had a profound impact on the 6-year-old girl.
So who better to open Glen Arbor Wines in the ground floor of her home on Lake Street, embrace our contemporary tourism appeal, and promote the terroir of Leelanau County’s budding wine culture and industry? Edwards, an editor at Traverse Magazine, has documented the life and times of this town and this peninsula for nearly 30 years. ABC’s “Good Morning America” sought her out as a tour guide when a crew arrived in summer 2011 to film footage of Glen Arbor and the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, prior to our home being named “the most beautiful place in America”.
In order to hold onto the home, and provide a place for her elderly mom Mary Turak to continue running her Yarn Shop, Edwards opened the ground level to retail. She had a Hawaiian shaved ice stand in front of the home from 2011-2016. Then a conversation began last summer with a Leelanau County wine-making family with 250 acres of grapes who would become an anonymous vintner partner and jumped at the idea of a retail location in the heart of downtown. Glen Arbor Wines opened on June 30 this year, just in time for peak tourism season, joining the M22 Store and Cherry Republic as wine tasting rooms in town.
One of Edwards’ goals, as wine host, as editor and as tour guide, is to connect what she calls “the two peninsulas”—not Leelanau and Old Mission, but the dunes and the vineyards. “I’ve met many people who get off the dunes and don’t even know that wine is made here,” she says. “The gist of my marketing plan was to bring them together.”
Glen Arbor Wines is a location for the entire family. Adults can sip Riesling, Chardonnay or Rosé, and kids (or those feeling like kids) can play bocce, hula hoop or badminton in the back yard. Some even toast marshmallows over the fire pit. Edwards’ is unable to prepare meals, but she offers premade sandwiches, cheeses and crackers, which she serves on paper plates. Guests are encouraged to bring a pizza, too.
The reception this summer and fall has been fantastic. Glen Arbor Wines will remain open daily, noon until 9 p.m. through October, and on weekends after that. Edwards is considering holding weekly trivia nights for year-round locals once the snow arrives.
“It’s been an endless wave of really fascinating people who are in love with northern Michigan,” Edwards says.
