Stop laughing, this isn't a joke: there is some good wine being made in Michigan. Although I can't blame you you if you didn't know. I didn't know until very recently that some Michigan wine is world-class, and I've lived in the general vicinity of Detroit for 14 years. Maybe Michigan's PR isn't as good as, for instance, its wine.
Most of the very best wine in the state is made up north, on the north shore of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. The Lower Peninsula is the mitten-shaped land mass which many of you may think is the entire state of Michigan. But no! There is also an Upper Peninsula, which is fabulous in many ways. Serious vineyards are popping up here in significant numbers.
But for now, most of truly world-class Michigan wine is made near Traverse City, on the north shore of the mitten. Left Foot Charley, which would probably have to be called the best of the best in the state, is actually IN Traverse City. It's a little unusual for a vineyard to actually be in a city. Bryan Ulbrich,
Among the celebrated wineries of Sutton's Bay, just a few miles from Traverse City, is Mawby Wine, which specializes in sparkling wine. You want a quote? Okay, let me quote from page 631 of The New Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia: "Mawby is making wines as good or better than any other sparkling wine in the country."
Yeah that's a pretty good quote! You thought I was fooling around here! *LOUD BUZZER SOUND* Wrong!
Black Star Farms, also on Sutton's Bay, makes some serious pinot noir.
How about a local specialty? Ice wine is made from grapes harvested when they are frozen on the vine. Ice wine is sweet and syrupy, a nice dessert wine. Canada, Germany, Austria and China are known for their ice wine, and, increasingly, so is Michigan.
The second-largest clustering of top-tier Michigan wineries, apart the Traverse City-Suttons Bay cluster and a scattering here and there, are in southwest Michigan, an hour or two's drive from Chicago. St Julian Winery of Paw Paw is perhaps the best of this bunch. They're known for their cream sherry and Riesling.
But these are just a few of the highlights. To cite the Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia again, Michigan ranks 6th among the 50 states in acreage devoted to wine grapes, and there were 160 wineries here as of 2019.
And all the signs I can see say that the number is growing fast. You know that feeling people sometimes get, when they know that something around them is about to become world-famous?
If you're a wine connoisseur, when you think of wine from the US, maybe you think of California, Oregon, Washington state, New York state and the Finger Lakes, and Virginia, and Texas and the Hill country. As well you should, all those regions, and still others, make very fine wine. But Michigan should be on your radar, too. I know, these days, all 50 states, or at least the contiguous 48, want to be wine-growers, everyone's clamoring Look at me! Look at me!. But I'm telling you. We're well above-average.
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