Traverse City Winery Trip March 27-29, 2009

Jason & I visited Traverse City for a long weekend (and late 2nd anniversary celebration). For those that are not familiar, Traverse City is located on the northwestern side of Michigan and is well-known for being the cherry capital of the world. Traverse City also has two main peninsulas that have tons of wineries that primarily produce sweet wines, such as Rieslings.

A gorgeous view from the Old Mission Peninsula in Traverse City, Michigan

We left our house on Friday morning and made the 4 hour drive to the other side of the state. Upon arriving we checked into the Cherry Tree Inn & Suites (see, I told you it was all about the cherries!). Our room was very nice and had a fire place, which is great considering it was still quite chilly in Traverse City. Friday evening we had a nice dinner at Scott's Harbor Grill and spent the rest of the night relaxing in our room.

On Saturday, we headed out to visit the wineries on the Old Mission Peninsula. We started at the Chateau Chantal, which was on a high hill and had a great view of both sides of the peninsula. We really liked their Pino Grigio and also enjoyed the Cherry Cerise, which is a sweet, dessert wine.

The second stop was Chateau Grand Traverse - we were already familiar with Grand Traverse wines because they are sold in our local grocery stores. Our favorites were their Sweet Harvest Riesling and Cherry Sangria. They also had Edelzwicker, which was a new wine for both of us. The Edelzwicker was a blend of Gewurztraminer, Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc & Muscat and was also referred to as the "Noble Blend."

Third stop was the Peninsula Cellars - the tasting room was located in an old one room schoolhouse and many of the wines had names that were school related. For example, they had wines that were called "Old School House White" and "Old School House Red." My favorite was their 2006 Chardonnay and Jason enjoyed the Apple Wine.

The fourth and final stop on our winery tour was at the Black Star Farms Winery. This was our favorite winery of the four that we visited - it was a new and contemporary location, plus the owner was extremely friendly, knowledgeable and personable. He spent a lot of time telling us about the wine process, specifically the procedure for making Ice Wines. Ice Wines are very sweet and are made from grapes that were allowed to ripen and freeze at 18 degrees on the vine. He also told us that the president recently enjoyed some of the Black Farms Ice Wine at a dinner that was hosted at the white house (it's good to know that the president is still enjoying the finer things in life during this economic recession, huh?) :-) We left with a few bottles of the infamous Ice Wine, along with some Late Harvest Riesling.

After our winery visits, we did some shopping in downtown Traverse City. The downtown area was quite nice and had hundreds of shops. We spent some time at the "Cherry Stop," a gift shop and wine bar that had everything cherry. We also browsed around the "Leaping Lizard" and "What to Wear" shops. The bartender at the Cherry Stop recommended that we have dinner at a nearby restaurant called the "Firefly." We had some local wine, several tapas plates and chocolate fondue for dessert. After a long day of touring the town, we headed back to our room for some much needed rest.

This morning we awoke to find out it had snowed about 6 inches! We grabbed a quick breakfast at Mable's (another recommendation of the Cherry Stop bartender) and hit the road. It was a great trip - how could it not be when you return home with a trunk full of wine??? :-) Here are a few more pictures from our trip.....