Michigan Wine

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, 

 owner and winemaker of Left Foot Charlie, is gaining a serious reputation as a white-wine genius. 

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.

On Not Being a Wine Connoisseur, Featuring Pinot Noir

At first I thought I might start this post by saying, "I like pinot noir." 

 

But then I thought for a minute, and realized I've had 3 glasses of wine in the past 15 years or so, and they were all pinot noir, so how do I really know whether I wouldn't have liked some other variety much better? Also, each of those 3 times, I was in a bar which seemed well-stocked with wine, and I asked for a glass of their best pinot noir. So perhaps all I really learned was that I like expensive wine. Perhaps I'd like expensive glasses of other types of wine about as well, and maybe I'd find cheap pinot noir disgusting.

And if the local Kroger is any indication, it's easy to find pinot noir at all price points. The pinot noir section of the wine section of the local Kroger is -- it is huge.

What or who exactly first made me interested in pinot noir, I can't remember, not at all. I think the chronological sequence was like this: I heard or read something which made me interested in pinot noir -- I REMEMBER NOW! I saw a documentary movie about wine, and in this movie, some authority on wine held forth in an interesting way on pinot noir, suggesting that the variety held vast rewards for connoisseurs. I don't remember his exact words, and I may have misunderstood him, but what I took him to be saying was that, more than any other variety, pinot noir was the wine for the connoisseur. That's what made me interested in pinot noir. Perhaps at some point I'll even remember the title of the movie.

Since watching that movie, I've certainly spent more time reading about pinot noir than I did actually slowly sipping those 3 glasses of it. Even if you don't count the time I've spent reading labels on bottles of pinot noir in the local Kroger, which itself is more time than I spent drinking those 3 glasses. 

I read somewhere just recently that western Michigan -- relatively near me. I'm in eastern Michigan, near Detroit -- is a notable pinot noir region. I have no idea how seriously I should take that. Maybe that's an accurate statement, or maybe some local enthusiast got carried away in comparing local efforts to the whole big world of wine. I don't know. Perhaps someday I'll know.

Unbeknownst to me until a few days ago, more recently than the most recent glass, the film Sideways, released in 2004, has had a lot to do with making pinot noir more popular. When the film came out in 2004 I noticed some reviews of it, which made it sound like the sort of movie I wouldn't like. To summarize the movie's plot: two friends, a has-been actor and sex addict and an alcoholic unsuccessful writer, take a trip to Santa Barbara wine country, as a sort of week-long bachelor party celebrating the sex addict's upcoming wedding. Among the vineyards and tastings, the sex addict harms people with his reckless sexuality and the alcoholic gets drunk. And then maybe uplifting things happen near the end of the movie, I don't know.

A few years ago, when I still had premium cable, Sideways made a return run on premium cable, and I saw a total of no more than 15 minutes of it, which confirmed my opinion that I didn't want to watch the whole thing. 

But I still hadn't noticed the movie's connection with the worldwide wine market, until, a few days ago, reading about pinot noir, I was informed that the alcoholic character in the movie is constantly praising pinot noir and trashing merlot, and that this has led to a great increase in demand for pinot noir and a great drop in demand for merlot. After reading that, and before remembering the wine documentary with the wine expert extravagantly praising pinot noir, I assumed, for a little while, that my interest in pinot noir must have come indirectly from Sideways, from someone who saw the movie, or from someone who listened to someone who saw the movie, etc. Now, for all I know, it might be exactly the other way around: maybe the author of Sideways got his interest in pinot noir from the very same wine critic who gave it to me.