New Lawton Ridge Winery steeped in Michigan wine history

Urban wineries are sprouting up across Michigan -- including many that are finding a niche with fruit wines, wines made from kits and wines made from grapes purchased from around the state or California.

Owning a vineyard is not always an option.

The new Lawton Ridge Winery in Kalamazoo, with a tasting room and winery, is different. It's the real deal, with grapes from their own commercial vineyard, which has supplied fruit to St. Julian since the late 1970s.

The lynchpin at Lawton Ridge Winery is Dean Bender, a chiropractor in Kalamazoo, who has made wine at home in his two-car garage since 1986. His partner in the winery is Crick Haltom, who has made wine with him since 1995. His partner in the 11-acre block of wine grapes in nearby Lawton is veteran grower Bill Harrison, who also is a geology professor at Western Michigan University.

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They opened the tasting room, located in a building nestled between housing developments, on Aug. 1.

"The picture on the label is the spot we ended up getting for the winery," said Bender, referring to the 4,400-square foot facility clad in cedar shakes and trimmed with Michigan fieldstone.

"It was a restaurant and a gas station when Red Arrow Highway was the only way to get from Detroit to Chicago," Bender said. "When I-94 came in, the business dried up, and it became a machine shop. It was a find for us," he said. Obviously, it saved them the cost of building a new winery at the vineyard, and is located five minutes away from Interstate 94 and 14 minutes from the vineyard.

Deep roots
The vineyard is one of the more storied sites in Michigan, with some of the state's oldest plantings of Chambourcin, the popular red French-American hybrid grape that makes fruity dry reds and excellent ports.

The original vineyard owners, George Beech and Lou Carlson, bought the old peach orchard in 1972, on a high point in Van Buren County, with plans to convert it to wine grapes. According to Bender, they contacted Philip Wagner, who pioneered French-American hybrid grapes back in the 1930s in Maryland before founding the historic Boordy Vineyards outside Baltimore. Wagner, who also ran a nursery, said, "I'll send you what you need," and shipped 18 different varieties. "They had something of everything," Bender said. "As an experimental vineyard, it was OK, but commercially, no."

Today, Bender and Harrison grow mostly European grape varieties -- Pinot Gris, Chardonnay and Cabernet Franc -- in addition to the hybrids Chambourcin, Vignoles and Seyval, and they are in the process of planting two acres of Riesling.

The wines for sale now were made at Fenn Valley because the cellar was not ready. All the wines from the 2008 vintage, however, were made at the new winery.

David Braganini, owner of St. Julian Winery in Paw Paw, has been a supporter of the new venture, and supplied the wood for the tasting room bar, which came from St. Julian's last cypress wine tank, which you can see in a photograph from the 1930s with St. Julian founder Mariano Meconi.

The staves from the huge wood tank were 15 feet long, and had to be planed, cut into smaller pieces and reassembled into a tasting counter by a local craftsman. It is dedicated to the memory of Braganini's late son, Gene.

The wines
There are a dozen wines for sale, with two, the Country White and Two Handed Red, featuring the work of local artists on the label.

The food-friendly wines show the workmanship of somebody who has made wine for a while. I loved the light oak and nice cherry fruit of the 2007 Two Handed Red, $12, named after a work by Kalamazoo photographer Fran Dwight. It's medium-bodied , with cherry-raspberry fruit and vanilla-butterscotch tones off the wood barrels to provide structure and complexity.

A Chambourcin Rose, $12, has a touch of sugar that will appeal to sweeter palates, but is subtle enough to satisfy people who drink dry. The Pinot Gris, $14, has yummy crisp-tart acidity more like a Sauvignon Blanc.

My favorite, and probably also the favorite of the two winemakers, is the Late Harvest Vignoles, $17, with tart citrus acidity, lots of weight on the palate and fruit with zing. It was picked at 28 Brix in a long, hot vintage that was perfect for Vignoles. Michigan winemakers love this grape anyway -- the brave vinify it dry, the practical leave some sweetness. You expect late harvest wines to be sweet and viscous, and this one is -- but it's the tart acidity and midpalate river of tropical fruit that make it sing.