Michigan Grapevine

My August column in Crain’s and the Traverse City Business News is now out. Read about the Grand Traverse Band’s consideration of a winery addition to their other ventures, including the Grand Traverse Resort and Spa and two casinos.

I’m also announcing, regretfully, that this is my last monthly column on the Michigan wine industry. While I plan to continue to write about it on an occasional basis, I’ve found myself unable to keep up the column to my personal standards in addition to my family and day job responsibilities.

The best way to keep up with any future wine stories will be to follow me on Twitter, where I’ll tweet out the links whenever something’s published.

Thanks to everyone who’s been a source and/or reader for the last two years of this endeavor. It’s been a great ride.

Cheers,

Cari

Finally made it down to the SW neck of Michigan’s wine industry. My family vacationed in South Haven last week and my husband and I visited Contessa Vineyards - that’s where the pic above was taken - and neighboring Karma Vista, where I snapped the under-construction wine production building, below (click it to see larger.)

The visits also made me a believer that print marketing still has a role to play. Like a lot of people I do most of my vacation planning online, from choosing and booking the rental cottage to the Mapquest directions to get there to the forecast to know what to pack. But then it turned out the cottage lacked wireless Internet. The South Haven Visitors’ Bureau guide provided in the cottage only listed one winery (Fenn Valley, which I’d already visited) with a phone number and address. Fenn Valley had the only ad, too. So we went to the physical bureau office and got a Lake Michigan Shore wine trail brochure, which allowed us to navigate to the wineries (albeit with three turnarounds after guessing wrong about our location on the not-to-scale map.) Whew. I was determined to make it to a couple. But I’ll bet someone less determined would have looked for something else to do about an hour sooner.

My posting has been pretty infrequent lately, so I’m making it official: I’m taking a summer vacation. You can still read my monthly columns in Crain’s Detroit Business (here’s June’s, on Douglas Valley, the organic vineyard mini-utopia planned for Manistee County, just posted today) and the TC Business News. And I may drop in with a post now and again. I’ve got a vacation planned to southwest Michigan in two weeks, and hope to finally visit a winery or two around the 42nd parallel. But rather than regular posts, for the next couple months I plan to take my kids to the park, to the beach (if it ever warms up) catch up on some reading, garden and work on my other, personal blog, Matrilineal Matters.

To keep up with the wine industry, my best recommendation is Joel Goldberg’s MichWine. Thanks for reading and have a great summer.