The Leelanau Peninsula Wine Trail is where stunning landscape and natural splendor meets exquisite wine making. “Experience Leelanau” is the Wine Trail’s new signature event, May 19-21—a celebration honoring ‘Michigan Wine Month’ and everything that makes our region special. Click here for information and to get your tickets.
Consider Tomas Moreno a matchmaker for Leelanau County’s migrant farmworkers. The soft-spoken, good-natured Texas native and Leland Public School graduate with family roots in Mexico manages 54 vineyard acres north of Lake Leelanau for Bel Lago and French Valley wineries. He interprets for and leads a crew of Hispanic farm workers, indispensable to the harvest, some of whom arrive in northern Michigan on H-2A temporary work visas. Tomas, who turns 41 next month, also recently began making fresh tortillas with his wife Julieta to sell to the local Latino community.
With bars in Traverse City and Bellaire writing lengthy pleas to the public to respect their employees, to refrain from cursing, spitting and worse, it was time to check in with Leelanau County’s wineries and see how they’ve managed the COVID-19 requirements of mask-wearing, distancing, sanitizing surfaces, and more.
The clinking of bottles fills the air as I sit down with Larry Mawby, founder of Mawby Vineyards in Suttons Bay, and Mike Laing, who, with his brother Pete, has taken the reins from Larry and is now running Mawby Vineyards as well as their still wine company Big Little Wines.
By Madeleine Hill Vedel Sun contributor As I round out my series on women in wine in Leelanau County, I feel a sense of elation inspired by the women I have met and the many jobs and opportunities that our local wine industry now offers. I have met winery owners, vintners, and vineyard managers, and […]
Susan Braymer is passionate about what she does. And what she does during the vast majority of her waking hours is run her and her husband Bill’s Laurentide winery in Leelanau County. Opened in 2012, Laurentide is the culmination of shared dreams for doing something in the wine business that started bubbling many years ago. Wine is part of Susan and Bill’s love story, on the table at celebrations, guiding their vacation destinations, and a source of endless learning and conversations.
Taylor Simpson grew up at Good Harbor Vineyards, located on M-22 west of Leland. Her dad, with his degree from the University of California at Davis where he studied wine making and grape growing, managed the back of the house, tending the grapes, making the wine, along with the family fruit farm, while her mom ran the tasting room. “The school bus would drop us off here and we would wash glasses from the day’s visitors.”
“The wine industry is a sea of men,” confirmed Kasey Wierzba, head winemaker at Shady Lane Cellars in Suttons Bay, as we sat down to discuss her experiences in the wine industry and the path she took to arrive where she is—in charge of production at one of the region’s most beloved wineries, winning accolades alongside her colleagues.
Rove Estate is the dream made possible by Creighton Gallagher of the Gallagher family, which has farmed in Leelanau and Grand Traverse Counties for multiple generations, and McKenzie, his wife and partner and a Gallagher for 10 years’ now, who brings her entrepreneurial spirit and business acumen to the project.
Looking out at the misty, gray day, noting yet another day of rain and cool weather, Emily Goodall mused, “Well, it’s good to have one of those years once in a while to show the whole range. If it continues this way, it will be a great year for bubbly, and dry, crisp whites. But we wouldn’t be upset if the weather took a turn towards the hot and dry soon.”