You may have at least heard of or seen our Michigan wine app for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Android — hopefully, you own it, use it and love it! Now, you have a chance to be IN it.
Welcome to Feedback Friday, our weekly feature that works like this: We solicit comments about a specific winery or wineries. You supply them. We pick some to include in our app. You become famous (at least in the Michigan wine community). The end.
Today's featured wineries:
Uncle John's Fruit House Winery Forty-Five North Tabor Hill
Send your comments on these wineries to cort@michiganbythebottle.com or post them as a reply to today's Feedback Friday thread on Facebook. We'll be accepting Feedback Friday comments for these featured wineries until next Friday, when we'll introduce a new set. (Of course, feel free to come chatter on Facebook about the wineries you love just for fun any old time. We dig that.)
This edition of WIOG Weekly Roundup features some Michigan wines we tried over Labor Day while visiting the Leelanau Peninsula. As we often stress, we're not wine experts, but we do taste a lot of Michigan wine. (You may have noticed.) WIOG is our attempt to give you an idea of some selections that you may be interested in checking out based on what we've been tasting. Cheers!
I had always been a white wine drinker, whatever was sweet and cheap, getting the two-for-one specials to accommodate my large family at holidays. Recently, however, my friends had turned oenophile, bringing bottles to the table upwards of 20 bucks a pop and insisting they tasted cherries or cinnamon in the tall black bottles. I tasted cough syrup, and soon after, Diet Coke.
So when I got the opportunity to meet with Channing Sutton, assistant tasting room manager at 45 North in Leelanau Peninsula, I thought I would finally get some insight into how “tasting” wine is different from drinking it.
Want the short version? Watch the video. Want the long version? Read the recap. Want the full story? Do both!
Keep reading for a meandering travel diary detailing our whirlwind weekend on the Northern Wine Loop, including where we stopped and (of course) what we drank ... Then stop by our Facebook page to chat about which Northern Wine Loop wineries are your favorites!
Congratulations to MARY MCCLEERY! Mary was randomly drawn from yesterday's entrants to win a pair of tickets to a tapas tour at Chateau Chantal. Mary, please email us at cort@michiganbythebottle.com within 48 hours to claim your prize. (For prizes not claimed within 48 hours, we will redraw from the original pool of entrants to determine a new recipient, so be sure to check back daily to see if you're a winner!)
We also had two people not claim their Bowers Harbor Vineyards hats in time from our contest earlier in the week, so we drew two new winners. SANDY GATES and SUE KURCZEWSKI, please email us within 48 hours to claim your BHV hats!
This contest is closed as of 11:59 p.m. Saturday, April 14.
Today's prize: Two $25 gift cards to use toward purchases from the winery; plus, each gift card comes with two free reserve tasting passes redeemable in the tasting room, which includes five premium wine samples and a dark chocolate. (TWO winners drawn today!)
Please click through for restrictions and instructions on how to enter...
If you've only ventured as far north as M-204 on the Leelanau Peninsula, you've only seen half of the county — and, in terms of wine, half of the story.
So says a group of Leelanau Peninsula wineries, which is redoubling efforts to ensure that visitors go the extra mile — or extra few miles — and see what they're missing at the peninsula's northernmost end. The Northern Wine Loop, a recently formed "collective" of 10 wineries, all north of M-204, encourages people to venture beyond the shop-lined village of Suttons Bay and into the more rural areas to discover hidden gems.
Cort's squealing about Riesling again (literally), but what's new? In our first post-vacation podcast, we taste through Forty-Five North's 2010 Riesling, which recently won a gold medal in the San Francisco Chronicle wine competition. Also, we totally blow by our self-imposed three-minute limit and were too lazy to edit aggressively (our brains are still lingering on a Caribbean beach) ... we'll do better next time, we promise!
Northern Michigan Wine: Despite its intimidating polysyllabic moniker, umlaut included, our Northern Michigan cool climate manifestations of the Gewürztraminer grape are straight up sexy. Batting its oeno-eyelashes in the shadow of Riesling, the ruddy-skinned gewürz has an aromatic profile somewhere between Chanel and tropical fruit salad, tickling the olfactories with scents of rose petal, lychee and passion fruit. The intensity of the aromas translates to the palate where they are offset by startling spiciness, bright acid and a sometimes oily viscosity.
While it favors cool climates, gewürztraminer has high potential sugar and a propensity for late-ripening, making it one of the last varietals to be harvested in October. Grown near Traverse City on both Old Mission and Leelanau Peninsulas, local gewürz runs the gamut from bone dry and cerebral to unctuously sweet and hedonistic with better vintages aging well for five years or more. Pair these peppery darlings with spicy Asian cuisine, smoked salmon or squash bisque.
Congratulations to TERESSA MARTIN HUPFER! She was randomly selected from yesterday's entries to win an official staff shirt from Fenn Valley Vineyards & Wine Cellar in Fennville PLUS a gift card redeemable for a free tasting for two people at any of Black Star Farms' locations.
Thirsty Thursday is upon us! Today's giveaway comes to us from the Leelanau Peninsula: It's a $25 gift card redeemable at Forty-Five North Vineyard & Winery's online store. If you haven't been to Forty-Five North since they opened their spiffy new tasting room, you've got to check it out!
Tasting room manager Channing Sutton and winemaker David Hill talk about the origins and future of Forty-Five North Vineyard & Winery, the wine that put it on the map and the philosophy behind the new tasting room, finished earlier this year.
