Michigan Hearts Wine

It's almost Valentine's Day, and Michigan is fermenting a juicy new romance. Red and white now washes the Great Lakes shores, moving our region past its beer-drinking rustbelt identity.

In fact, Michigan wines have got their own love scene going. With the world at their feet, Travel + Leisure magazine editors chose Michigan's wine country as one of the 50 Best Romantic Getaways for 2010. Eat your heart out, Napa.

And the growing stats show that Detroiters can get a far sexier drink than Welch's from home these days. According to the Michigan Grape and Wine Industry Council, as of early 2009 the state had 14,600 acres of vineyards. Most of the space is still reserved for juice varieties like Concord and Niagara, but 2,000 acres are planted with wine grapes – vitis vinifera (the classic European grape) and hybrids of European and American species. Michigan now ranks eighth in the nation for wine grape production, and vineyard land is growing – over 60 percent in the last 10 years.

Grape cultivation starts up in tiny Northport, at the tip of the sandy rolling Leelanau peninsula that enamored Travel + Leisure editors, and stretches down to the far southwest corner of the state, a skip over the Indiana border. The crop flourishes within 15 miles of Lake Michigan, which throws a lake effect blanket over the coastal area thereby allowing more ripening time. And researchers at Michigan State University's Southwest Michigan Research and Extension Center are toying with varieties of grapes that won't shrivel over Michigan winters.  

At least 64 commercial wineries squeeze more than one million gallons of wine annually from these Michigan-grown grapes. It's a fun irony that this state has a city called Temperance and its wineries still attract more than 800,000 visitors annually. Collectively, it's a $300 million-a-year industry.

So can this elixir take root in our own backyards? Michigan Wines.com, the state industry website, shows a few wineries and vineyards in the state's southeast quadrant, but all are west of US-23. Metro Detroit may lack vineyards, but there are specialty wine shops galore and chic wine bars in downtowns like Royal Oak. And a whole cottage industry has sprung up around helping us feel the love for a drink often labeled as intimidating.

That's unfortunate, because wine is like the person at the bar who seems snooty but is really just shy and has a lot going on inside. Pat Mulrenin, winemaker and co-owner of Fieldstone Winery in downtown Rochester, is one entrepreneur who's made a business of drawing out the good stuff. In 2003, he and partner Steve Mulrenin converted the Fieldstone brewery into a winery. The place has an art gallery feel and is spacious enough to host events and a winemaking operation, where the partners make their own brand for retail sale. They've also opened the place for amateurs to mix up their own batches. The Fieldstone tagline?  'Your Personal Winery'.

Budding mixologists pay anywhere from $160 to $260 to make 28-30 bottles of vino. Cost depends on the varietal and whether Fieldstone supplies the bottles (clients can bring their own, which will be sterilized). DIY wine making, it seems, is rising nearly as fast as it takes to drink a shot. Franchisers such as Vintner's Cellar in downtown Royal Oak have opened up, but Fieldstone is one of the original players.

For the uninitiated – that'd be most of us – here's the rundown: Pick your varietal, pour juice into six-gallon fermentation containers, add a fining agent to settle the sediment, and add yeast. Fermentation takes a week, and then winery staffers take over. They rack the wine (in lay terms, that means transferring it to another container after a sediment forms), add sulfites to remove any remaining yeast and to preserve, then a fining agent to clear up the liquid. It's ready for bottling after five to eight weeks. Reds may need another six to eight months before they're ready to drink, but whites are generally ready to go.

"If they're patient, [clients] can make some very, very good wines that can be comparable to $30, $40, $50 bottles of wine at a fraction of the cost," Mulrenin says. Available grape varieties are sourced worldwide, Michigan excepted. While he gets Michigan grapes like traminette to crush for the winery's own batches every year, there isn't enough bulk juice for clients to use because the state's vineyards don't produce enough extra fruit. No grape stomping here, but anyone can try out the 100-year-old crusher used for demos.

"It gives people who want to learn about wine an easy way to learn about it. We do tastings all the time," Mulrenin offers. His customer base includes many more 20-and 30-somethings of late. "You can taste it before you buy it here, which is a great selling point for us."

The gold seal

There's tasting – and then there's tasting. On May 20th, the Great Lakes Great Wines Grazing will bring two dozen judges to sample 500 wines at the Oakland Community College (OCC) culinary school in Farmington Hills.

"There's no other competition like this in the world," event chair Darlene Levinson, a certified sommelier, says. "We only allow vineyards who enjoy the unique climate or microclimate of the Great Lakes to compete in this judging." Wineries from Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ontario are invited to enter every year. In 2009, about 340 out of 500 wines submitted earned medals ranging from double gold to bronze. Half of the entries were from Michigan.

Judging is a better term for the event, Levinson says. "It is not a competition against each other," she clarifies. "It's just how good did they make that wine, and if they made it well and it tastes the way [the varietal] is supposed to taste, then they get a medal."

That evening, for a $50 donation, the public is invited to finish all 500 opened bottles and sop up the juice with appetizers prepared by local chefs. "It's been very successful since its inception," says Levinson, who is also an instructor in the college's culinary program. "…People kind of turn their nose up sometimes and they have no idea that we make fabulous wines in this area. Fabulous! I think that not only is it good to promote Michigan products or Great Lakes products, people have the opportunity to come and taste and use their taste against the judges."

And it's not just Michigan's whites that medal. The less-heralded reds aren't exactly bottom of-the-barrel. You don't need to go to Santa Barbara (a la Sideways) for good pinot noir. "Black Star Farms [of Travel + Leisure fame] was invited to a competition for pinot noirs and they came out on top against California, Oregon, all these famous places where people think that's the only place to get a pinot noir," she adds.

If you crave the know-how to sip from the judge's chair, OCC is looking to start a wine certificate program within the next year, Levinson says. The program will prepare students to take the sommelier exam. Until then, trust your palate with a wine tasting course.

We'll drink to that

Nidal Daher, a certified sommelier, has poured a lot into his wine-tasting classes at the Community House in Birmingham over the past 16 years. There's lots of information on geography, labeling, and even food pairings, but it's easy to digest. And the sessions are really laid-back fun. Michigan bottles are included in his "Summer Whites" series, held outdoors, picnic-style, in summer. "So oftentimes, I on purpose go and do a tasting at the Community House and I bring wines I haven't tasted," Daher explains. "I tell people, 'I haven't tried these wines. We're going to taste them together and see what we think of these wines.' "

When not teaching it seems like Daher dabbles in nearly everything to do with the vine. He runs wine consultancy Sommelier Connections, Inc. and custom designs wine cellars and storage equipment for residential and commercial clients such as Plum Market and the former Five Lakes Grill. He also handles appraisals, auctions, and restaurant wine list setup and staff training. Past clients include the Townsend Hotel, Forté, and the now-closed Tribute restaurant.

Restaurants are offering more tastings, varieties, and wines by the glass than ever, Daher says, and "That's obviously reaching the consumer, and the educated consumer is a good consumer because when you're educated, you're comfortable with wine, you drink more wine, you buy wine."

Prize wine lists

In each of the eight years since its opening, Shiraz has received an Award of Excellence from Wine Spectator magazine, according to Paula Touchtone, general manager and sommelier of the Bingham Farms eatery. Of note: Touchtone is a colleague of Madeline Triffon, the first American woman, and the second woman in the world, to earn the rarefied title of Master Sommelier. Only 103 professionals in North America hold this designation. Triffon, wine director for Shiraz's parent company, the Matt Prentice Restaurant Group, often leads tastings at the restaurant's Wednesday Wine Bars, usually held the first week of each month.

For one event, in-state winemakers were invited to compare their own wines with those serving as their original inspiration. "So you had some world-class wines being tasted side by side with Michigan wines, and the Michigan wines hold their own. I'm proud to be from Michigan," Touchtone says, "but if the wines weren't good quality, I probably wouldn't have agreed to sit and talk to you."

It's no secret that Michigan's cold climate is a good love match for the white wines native to northern Europe. Some wineries are garnering national acclaim and awards for Riesling, Pinot Gris, Gewürztraminer, and sparklers. Touchtone rattles off a few, the fruits of whose labors have graced the Shiraz wine list: Wyncroft, Left Foot Charley, Chateau Grand Traverse, L. Mawby, Two Lads , Forty Five North.

Reds are more challenging because they take longer to ripen, but Pinot Noir is one to watch. And "I've tasted some absolutely gorgeous rosés, but the Cabernet Franc from up north is lovely," she says. "The Gill's Pier Cabernet Franc-Merlot blend, there's a reason why it won so many awards, because it's a rock-solid product."

The wide accessibility of online information has closed the book on the image of a white-haired wine gentry. "When I turned 21, you went out for cocktails," Touchtone relates. "Now what I'm starting to see in the restaurants are people in their 20s and young 30s are into the wines. Their palates are pretty sophisticated and they value where they put their dollars…the age of that level of sophistication has gotten younger over the years. People are taking it more seriously."

And the amorous psychology of oenology is a serious proposition, too. It's an ancient pairing that stems with Bacchus, the virile, goblet-waving Greco-Roman god of wine and fertility. I ask Daher, the co-author of Italian food and wine pairing tome Romance Begins in the Kitchen, for his take on Valentines and vines. "The most romantic meal is the one you cook with your partner together," he says. "To me, anything about food and wine is romantic."

This tasting is over. Time to go make Cupid in a bottle.

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Tanya Muzumdar loves a good Garnacha from Spain. Stateside, she's a fan of Chateau Grand Traverse Riesling. She is Metromode's Assistant Editor. She is also a freelance writer. Her previous article was Metro Detroit: A Visitor's View.

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All Photographs © Marvin Shaouni Photography
Contact Marvin here

Photos:

Wall of Fame at Fieldstone Winery - Rochester

Personal collection: A bottle of 1949 Clos de Vougeot

Pat Mulrenin, winemaker and co-owner of Fieldstone Winery - Rochester

Fermenting red wine at Fieldstone Winery - Rochester

Blind Wine Tasting

Nidal Daher

Wine tasting at Commune - Royal Oak