Tasting Michigan
Water, weather, sun meet at Traverse City to grow wine, cherries
TRAVERSE CITY, MICH: The Old Mission Peninsula is a colorful place.
It starts with the multi-hued waters of the Lake Michigan bays. The water looks like it came from the Caribbean with its aquamarine and turquoise colors.
More than 2.6 million cherry trees were in snowy bloom and the vineyards were coming alive with greenery. You are surrounded by a touch of the North Woods, too.
My wife, Pat, and I spent a delightful weekend in a winery in May on the fingerlike Old Mission Peninsula just north of Traverse City.
What, you ask, does one do in a winery? Very simply, we relaxed and sampled wines at Chateau Chantal, a place that calls itself an Old World inn along one of Michigan's wine trails. It is a warm and charming place with superior wines that are among the best in Michigan and are comparable to Napa Valley and, dare it be said, European wines.
The winery/bed-and-breakfast with its 11 rooms sits on a ridge, surrounded by vineyards and cherry trees. You can see bays to the west and to the east. The rooms and suites are decorated in French country style.
The winery was established in 1983 when owners Robert and Nadine Begin (a former priest and a former nun who married) replaced cherry orchards with grafted vinifera grapevines, the types grown in the French Bordeaux region that sits at the same 45th latitude.
The 65 acres are planted in pinot grigio, chardonnay, riesling, pinot noir, gewurztraminer, merlot and pinot meunier grapes. The winery produces about 50,000 gallons of wine per year.
Like many other nearby wineries, Chateau Chantal has a public tasting room with free samples of its 27 handcrafted wines from dry to sweet to sparkling.
Each bed and breakfast guest is entitled to a full glass of wine per night. Plus you can get samples like visitors to the winery's tasting room. But the big plus is that when the tasting room closes at night to drop-in visitors and the staff leaves, it remains open to the bed and breakfast guests.
The bed and breakfast also features a great room with piano and fireplace and an outdoor patio with tables and chairs. There is a computer for guest use plus a library. The local newspaper is delivered to your door.
Chateau Chantal — it is not the only Traverse City winery that offers lodging — serves up a killer breakfast for guests. An optional tour of the winery in the basement is offered after breakfast. You are on your own for other meals, but there are plenty of options on the
peninsula and 12 miles away in Traverse City.
The winery offers an array of cooking and wine-tasting classes and seminars, tapas tours, concerts and other events.
