The four-hour drive under the relentless gray of central Michigan skies passed without incident, and we rolled into downtown Traverse City a little after noon.
We had lunch at a small place on Front St. that featured local organic ingredients (the name escapes me for some reason), where I had a minimalist but delicious sandwich of local Lake Michigan walleye pan-fried in olive oil, then immediately set off for the wineries.Two peninsulas jut out into Grand Traverse Bay on either side of Traverse City - Leelanau and the much smaller Old Mission to the East. Over two dozen wineries are spread across the two. As a wine-growing an wine-making region, the area is young: the earliest wineries were established in the late 1970s, but most have sprung up in the 80s and early 90s. Besides the microclimate created by the geography of the peninsulas and the bay, the area lies directly on the 45th parallel, said to create ideal conditions for growing grapes because of the angle at which the sun's rays hit the ground. Willamette Valley in Oregon, among others, is located on the 45th parallel. To the extent that the area is known at all, which isn't much, it is known for Riesling and Gewurztraminer - not surprising, given those grapes' predilection for cool climates. We would soon find out that Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris were also common, and that Cabernet Franc has taken off like gangbusters. Similar to other "secondary" wine-growing areas like Virginia and New York's Finger Lakes, Michigan makes a fair number of sweet, fruit-flavored wines (the primary flavoring being locally grown cherries), but "serious" wines are also plentiful and growing stronger.
There was no way we could visit all the wineries in the two days available to us, and although I had done some research, my choices were somewhat random - I looked for places that emphasized "serious" wines and deemphasized cherry-flavored nonsense or grew unusual varieties and made unusual styles, as well as wineries that focused on wines and did not attempt to cram restaurants and bed-and-breakfasts into their properties. Our first stop was Penninsula Cellars, whose tasting room is located in a former one-room schoolhouse build in 1896. Their portfolio is large and does include some fruit-flavored wines, along with a full spectrum of whites and a few reds, some of them off-dry. We focused on the dry wines, poured by a friendly but excessively languid young blonde, and I was immediately struck by the quality. These were delicious, well-made wines with no obvious defects. Trying to take detailed tasting notes would have been overwhelming, but the few I did jot down tell me that the Gewurztraminer was a standout. There is a bottle still in my fridge, so I'll be able to do a proper review soon enough. I also bought a bottle of their dry Riesling and opened it a couple of weeks after getting home. In addition to the typical Riesling flavors of citrus and that elusive petroleum quality on the back palate, the Peninsula had a pronounced flavor of honeydew melon. It was delicious.
From Peninsula, we headed up the road to Chateau Grand Traverse, the largest and most commercial winery we would visit on our entire tour. We took a tour of the wine-making facilities (G., who is a trained sommelier, was impressed by the winery's methodic approach - we would see its opposite the following day), then tasted a few wines from their long list in the giant and excessively touristy tasting room-cum-gift shop. Despite the scale and the commercial focus, the wines were good, and, probably thanks to the volume, more affordable than elsewhere. Much like in Virginia, Michigan wines tend to be on the expensive side - the economics of winemaking and the need to recoup the enormous investment a winery requires, I suppose. We've all heard the joke: Q: How do you make a small fortune in wine-making? A: Start with a large one.
Our next stop was Brys Estate (pronounced "Brice"). Visibly a high-end operation, with a stylish, oak-paneled tasting room, it had no fruit-flavored wines in its portfolio and was the site of our first paid tasting. It was also the only scam and the only real disappointment of the trip. Our wine was poured by a handsome and gregarious young fellow, friendly but ever so slightly slippery, with something of a faux-intellectual air about him. 2007, evidently, was the best vintage in the history of Michigan winemaking, and Brys had made a series of super-premium wines in that vintage. With only 500 bottles of each wine available, they were selling for a shocking $50/bottle, but for $10, we could taste all of them, and even get some food thrown in. What a deal. The food proved to be downright insulting - a soggy Carr's cracker, a small glop of stale goat cheese and a piece of "salami" that I was convinced was actually Slim-Jim, on a paper plate directly out of the refrigerator, where I am sure it had been sitting since before the 2007 vintage was even picked. Out first wine was a Chardonnay, and I immediately got a whiff of nail polish - ethyl acetate (thanks, G., for the chemistry lesson), a classic flaw in a wine. Our trust was permanently undermined, though I must admit that objectively, the reds - a Pinot Noir, a Merlot and a Cab Franc - were good. Just not $50 good.
Our last stop on Old Mission was 2Lads, the Northern-most winery on the Peninsula. Located in a striking modernist building overlooking the vineyards and Grand Traverse Bay beyond, the place is breathtaking for its location and design, but you might conclude that the attention and investment lavished on the appearance would be concomitantly absent from their products. You would be wrong - the wines were delicious; the best we tasted that day and the best reds of the entire trip. The portfolio is small - these guys are super-focused - but they get back in quality what they sacrifice in variety. Both the Pinot Noir and the Cabernet Franc, though pricey at $25, were knockouts: the Pinot smooth and fruity but with excellent depth and structure, the Cab enormous and packed with flavor, drinkable now with a hearty meal but designed, I suspect, for cellaring. The people at the tasting room were very knowledgeable, and we left with a feeling of having found the holy grail of Michigan wine.
It had started to rain by this time, and after having paid a quick visit to the lighthouse at the tip of the peninsula, we drove back to Traverse City, checked into our motel and, somewhat refreshed, set out in search of dinner and, for a change, a non-grape-based beverage. I knew of two brewpubs in town - Mackinaw and North Peak, and we intended to try them both. The server at Mackinaw, however, informed us of a new place - Right Brain Brewing Company - well hidden in a former warehouse on the edge of downtown and accessed through an entrance shared with a hair salon. Intrigued, we abandoned North Peak in its favor. What we found was a relatively quiet, well-lit room with cafeteria-style tables and a bar that looked more like a diner counter. The place felt like a mixture of a coffeehouse and a public library, not a pub. Right Brain's planning and scheduling still needs to be ironed out, apparently - they were out of many of the beers on their list - but we did have a delicious, crisp ESB and an enormously complex, aromatic barley wine. I wish I had taken detailed notes.It was late by this time, but one of the cafes downtown was still open, so we stopped in for a detoxifying pot of green tea and a bit of ceremonial reading from Kingsley Amis's On Drink before heading back to the motel to sleep off our first day of tasting.
2 comments:
It sounds like you had lunch at our favorite - The Cook's House.
Yep, that was it -- thanks!
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