Report from - Michigan Winery Tour (Traverse City Area) Day 1 June 13, 2009
14 Sep 2009- Details
- Category: On the Road with the Grape Guy
I received an email, oh, it’s gotta be about six months ago now, that said, “Michigan now has 64 wineries” … Michigan has wineries? That seemed to be the question on everybody’s lips when I told them I was headed there to check it out.
So why the sudden urge to check out Michigan wineries? Well, my fiancée hails from the state of the Spartans (and the Wolverines) so we did a stay-cation – well, a stay-cation for her, me, I’ll go anywhere they’re pouring wine.
We left just after noon on the Friday (June12) to avoid the summer traffic going north (think Ontario cottage country) and to stave off that would-be sleepy feeling we would undoubtedly get if we were to stick with the original plan of waking up at 4 in the morning on Saturday. Traverse City is about a 4-hour drive from Detroit. We arrived around dinnertime and ate at one of the first places we saw that looked decent; we ended up at a family restaurant called “Shelde’s”. The place had a warm friendly atmosphere and good food. While there we checked out their breakfast menu, seemed like a good place to come on Saturday morning too. After dinner we checked ourselves into the Traverse City HoJo’s for a good night’s sleep. (The nice part about being a day early is that we got a chance to rest and relax before the hectic schedule of the next 4 days began; I actually got to read a book that was not about wine).
Saturday morning we were up-and-at-‘em, breakfasted at Schelde’s, then it was off to see the wineries of the Leelanau Peninsula, which is to the west of West Grand Traverse Bay in Lake Michigan; to put this into perspective, they call this region “Northwest Michigan”.
First stop was Black Star Farms ... (Read all the Day 1 details with pictures )
