Nearest wine country so close: in palm of your hand
Bumping along in a wooden wagon pulled by winemaker Doug Welsch's tractor, past vines heavy with late August grapes, seems a little like riding through northern California wine country.
Unlike Napa, this place isn't crawling with busloads of tourists. No foothills on the horizon. And it's hard to imagine most California vintners ushering visitors through the vines, explaining what grapes grow best in the region and pouring tastes of pinot grigio and cabernet franc, as Welsch does on his tours.
This is southwestern Michigan wine country, about a two-hour drive from Chicago and the city's closest official U.S. grape-growing region.
Welsch, who owns Fenn Valley Vineyards and Wine Cellar in Fennville, Mich., is one of a growing number of local vintners eager to put the area on the wine map by making a quality product and bringing a personal touch to the business.
The number of wineries in this region has expanded in recent years to about a dozen -- a fact that hasn't gone unnoticed by tourists.
"Now, there are a lot of people who will make the effort to make the trip because there's a weekend of recreation available," said Welsch, whose visitor numbers have jumped about 10 percent annually in the past five years. Fenn Valley is the northernmost winery in the area, 140 miles from Chicago.
For decades, Chicago tourists have been taking Interstate 94 around the southern end of Lake Michigan and through Indiana to get to Michigan's beaches and sand dunes, but they often headed farther north to the popular art gallery town of Saugatuck for more cultural fare. These days, the cluster of wineries around the "B" towns of Baroda, Buchanan and Berrien Springs makes for a full day of touring and sampling.
Autumn is the perfect time for a Michigan wine country trip. Not only is there great leaf-peeping potential, but a wagon ride in the vineyards at Fenn Valley or Lemon Creek wineries doesn't entail baking under the hot summer sun. And the wineries pick their grapes in October, giving visitors a glimpse of a key step in the wine-making process. (Lemon Creek lets visitors pick concord grapes that can be used to make jelly). In November, many of the wineries put on harvest dinners.
As the weather gets colder, wineries often offer cellar tours. Many put on special events throughout the year, including the popular wine-making class at Round Barn Winery in Baroda.
Not only are southwest Michigan wineries closer to Chicago than those in northern Michigan's Leelanau Peninsula, they also have a longer history and tend to be larger. While Michigan has many federally recognized American Viticultural Areas, Illinois only has one: Shawnee Hills near Carbondale.
The majority of Michigan's 14,600 acres of grape-growing vineyards are used for juice grapes; some 1,800 acres are devoted to the expanding wine grape-growing industry, according to the Michigan Grape and Wine Industry Council. The state has 56 commercial wineries, with more opening each year.
While Midwest wineries have been known for sweeter fruit and French-American hybrid wines, many are now boosting production of familiar European grape varietals. Some of the southwest wineries are even selling to top-flight Chicago restaurants. Michael de Schaaf, who opened Hickory Creek Winery of Baroda in 2006, has some of his wines on the menus at Everest downtown and North Pond in Lincoln Park.
"What we need to be doing as an industry is getting into Chicago and pitching ourselves as the local wine region," said de Schaaf, who's been making wine here for nearly 15 years.
De Schaaf teamed up with a German and Australian to found Hickory Creek. He wants to focus less on the sweet wines and more on the dry, European wines.
In the early 1900s, concord grapes and other so-called "vitis labrusca" native to North America were being used locally to make wine. As American palates shifted to drier wines in the '60s and '70s, winemakers responded and started using French-American hybrid grape varietals such as chambourcin and vignoles, which are well-suited to the colder Midwestern climate. They also introduced some European varietals, such as chardonnay. The popularity of these European varietals has been on the rise in recent years as Michigan wineries started churning out more cabernet franc, pinot grigio and merlot, among others.
The two oldest wine-making companies in Michigan -- St. Julian and Warner -- have wine-tasting rooms next to each other in Paw Paw. The St. Julian Wine Company has been owned by the Italian Braganini family since 1921 and is now the largest winery in the state, selling 40 different wines. Next door, Warner Vineyards, founded in 1938, houses its tasting room and an adjacent restaurant in an historic Paw Paw waterworks building on the banks of a creek.
Tabor Hill Winery and Restaurant in Buchanan, the first winery in the area to start planting European varietals such as chardonnay and riesling, is one of the most picturesque stops on the winery tour. The restaurant and tasting room are perched on a tree-canopied hill, with the dining room overlooking the vineyards.
Just a few miles from Tabor Hill in Baroda is the Round Barn Winery, which offers wine-making classes under winemaster Matt Moersch. A full day of training costs between $400 and $475.
Nearby Lemon Creek Winery in Berrien Springs has more of a farmstead feel, selling fresh fruit as well as wine.
Len Olson, who was the first winemaker at Tabor Hill in the late '60s, returned to the area this year from Kentucky.
He's opening a new winery in Baroda called Founder's Wine Cellar. Olson is buying grapes from local producers and hopes to have his first bottles for sale by next month and a tasting room open by next spring.
"I see Michigan right now where Napa was in 1967," Olson said.
Lynne Marek is a local free-lance writer.