Michigan Winery Visit: Sandhill Crane Vineyards

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The second leg of our recent tasting trip to Michigan found us at Sandhill Crane Vineyards in Jackson. The road to the winery was rutted and icy. We felt that way too, until we stepped inside the friendly and inviting tasting room.

Anne was our server and was helped by Rose the winery dog. The Sandhill Crane winery is a family owned and operated winery and features estate bottled wine. The winery is part of the Pioneer Wine Trail, located in Southeast Michigan. The winery is in a picturesque setting and looks like a perfect venue for warm weather fun.

The tasting room offers one of our favorite vintages -- “free.” There is no charge for tastings, but the wide array of great wines almost guarantees you’ll be going home with a bottle or two.  The tasting menu offers a tantalizing 32 wines.

We began with the Chanson, which is made from the Chardonelle grape. This grape was originated at Cornell University. This is the driest Sandhill Crane wine and is crisp with a hint of butter and oak.
The Chardonnay followed and  is citrusy with a note of green apples.

We enjoy tasting some off-beat varietals, and Sandhill is a good place to do this. The 2007 Legacy is a limited edition dry blend of Chardonnay and Vignoles. It has a touch of sweetness and goes well with chicken and fish. An added bonus is that $4 from the sale of each bottle goes to the Legacy Land Conservancy, which protects local nature and farmland.

Traminette is another unusual grape. It is related to Gewürztraminer and shares many of the same traits. This is a dry, floral wine. We felt this wine wasn’t quite crisp enough for our taste.

The Vintner’s Select Riesling brought smiles to our faces. This is a dry Riesling with pear and green apple flavor notes. This unique wine also had a pleasing clean acidity.

Moving to the reds we sampled the Moulin Rouge. It is a light blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Chancellor. It is a golden red color and surprisingly has a caramel aroma.

The 2004 Merlot struck a black cherry and currant chord with us and is lightly oaked. This has a pleasing red berry bouquet and has a smooth and lingering finish.

The 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon was the winner of the 2008 Great Lakes Wine Judging and is made with grapes from Michigan’s oldest vines (Lemon Creek). It has dried cherries and black pepper flavors. We judged it pleasant, but wasn’t full-bodied enough.

We can’t get enough of Chancellor. The 2005 Proprietor’s Reserve Chancellor features a deep purple hue and a rich and velvety body. It might have been the frosty day outside, but we enjoyed a nice warming effect followed by a cranberry finish. This was one of our favorites.

The Abrazo wine has a great story to it. It was developed in honor of the Cascades Humane Society who rescued Rusty (pictured on the label) from the animal pound on the last day. Rusty, one of the world’s greatest huggers, now lives with Holly, the Sandhill winemaker. $2 from every bottle goes to the CHS. The wine features De Chaunac and Chambourcin and has a twangy, jammy taste.

We finished up our tastings of the dry and off-dry wines with the Vidal Blanc. This is complex and sophisticated. The finish is long and clean. This is a great white (peachy and floral) and one or our favorites. It’s also a steal at only $13.95. We picked up a bottle of this baby.

The rest of the Sandhill lineup ramp up the sugar scale from semi-sweet to sweet. We tried  Overture, Staccato and Rhapsody in Red. Of the three, Staccato was most noteworthy.

Sandhill Crane Vineyards is a great destination for a wine getaway or a day trip. It offers friendly people, great wine and a super setting.

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Dinner Concerts Set For Lone Oak Vineyard Estate

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Lone Oak Vineyard Estate, 8400 Ann Arbor Rd., Grass Lake, MI, (517)522-8167, has announced a new series of dinner concerts. Their newly expanded wine tasting room provides an intimate setting for dinner concerts and has seating for 42 guests. Every seat has a great view of the stage. Enjoy dinner and wine while listening to high quality, live music. Appetizers and dessert are also available.

You can beat the winter blues every Saturday, from 6 to 9 PM. The winery offers a different prix fixe menu each week. Dinner includes salad, bread and entree. Appetizers, dessert and, of course, wine by the glass will be available.

February 20th - Enjoy the music of local favorites, Steve Tucker (guitar/vocals) and Dean Borso (bass/vocals) in this most intimate setting. This duo will entertain you from the first note to the last.

February 27th - Tap your toes and dine to the sounds of legendary R & B vocalist/musician, Bob Schultz, of "BigFoot Bob and the Toe Tappers". Bob created the signature organ sounds for the Bob Seeger System. His keyboard, sax and vocal skills are incomparable.

Music will start at 6 PM, dinner will be served between 6:30 and 7:00, and music will continue until 9 PM. There is a $5 cover charge. Seating is limited, so call now for reservations to make sure you don't miss out.

Surviving Snowmaggedon With Wine

When "Snowmaggedon" hit the Toledo area, most people headed to the grocery store to stock up and maybe to Home Depot for a shovel -- not your Toledo Wines and Vines tasting team. We had been planning to go to the Sonoma County Pinot Noir tasting at Aficionado with Sax Man and Wine Chick, but the snow began falling in earnest. A brisk wind made the flakes shoot across horizontally. Luckily for our readers, neither snow, nor wind, nor common sense could deter us from the wine tasting -- in fact we also decided to go to the Cork's tasting of blended wines as well.

Aficionado was crowded. Apparently being surrounded by wine and friends is a fun way to flaunt the advice of "Blizzard" Bill Spencer, the Channel 13 weatherman.

We opened with the 2007 MacMurray Ranch Sonoma Coast Pinor Noir. This is a classic Pinot with rich aromas of red fruit, but it seemed like it could use a bit more time in the bottle. Certainly a nice wine, but our least favorite of the evening.

The 2007 Taft Street Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir was a popular pick, not only with our gang, but other tasters as well. This is very reasonably priced at $19.99. It has a big bouquet with a woodsy flavor. I've noticed Taft Street featured at some top restaurants across the country and now I know why. This is also a great QPR (Quality Price Ratio).

The 2007 Schug Sonoma Coast Pinor Noir is a delicate Pinot that is steel fermented. It has cherry and spice in the mouth. This is well balanced and a great wine.

The grand finale was the 2006 Scherrer Sonoma County Pinot Noir. This is priced at $39.99 and is on a different plateau than the other Pinots. Only 360 cases of this gem were produced. Upon swirling and enjoying the wine visually, great "legs" were evident. These little runners down the inside of the glass are taken by some to be a mark of quality for red wine, although I understand it has mostly to do with the alcohol content. This is a harmonious wine with a cola and lightly toasted oak taste. It has a central fruit element as well. In short, this was the crown prince of the evening, with Taft Street coming in a close second.

Outside the storm was getting worse, so we did the logical thing and headed for Corks.

Featured for this evening were wine blends and we started with a 2008 Eric Ross Marsanne-Roussanne from the Russian River Valley in California. This is a rich, North Rhone style blend. It is light straw in color with a rustic flavor.

Our next glass was the Chateau Virgile 2007Costieres de Nimes Rouge. This red is a blend of Syrah, Grenache and Mourvedre. This is a tasty wine with staying power.

Next up was the Newton 2005 Napa Valley Claret. Claret is an old English term applied to red Bordeaux blends. This is a wine that is casual yet sophisticated.  It is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Syrah. It has flavors of black cherry and blackberries. This was the most enjoyable wine of the evening at Corks. It costs about $17.

Rounding out the evening was D'Arenberg The Laughing Magpie 2006, a Shiraz Viognier blend from Australia. The vineyards and bushlands around the D'Arenberg winery are full of the the unique native Australian bird, the Kookaburra, famous for its distinctive laughing call. Two daughters of the winemaker began calling the birds "the laughing magpies" and the name stuck -- to the birds as well as the wine. This wine has a rich fruit aroma and a lush mouthfilling flavor of cranberries, blueberries and cherries. The 2006 vintage is said to be one of the best for this wine. D'Arenberg also makes the well-known "The Stump Jump" wines and the high end "The Dead Arm" Shiraz. The Laughing Magie was nice, but a tad too fruit-driven for my liking.

Warmed by the fruit of the grape, we headed back out into the swirling snow...

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2006 Seven Artisans Meritage

A make-your-own pizza dinner party was the scene when we popped the cork on this bottle from a small winery in Suisun Valley, California. Meritage is America's version of a Bordeaux style blend (check out our story on Meritage) and this blend is about 90 percent Merlot and 10 percent Cabernet Sauvignon with dashes of Malbec and Petite Verdot.

I was hoping for a bit more body from this wine so it would stand up to our pizza creations. The label didn't disclose the percentages of the various grapes, so a didn't realize it was dominated by the mellower Merlot. That being said, it was a very enjoyable wine -- although not the perfect match for pizza. This would be a better match with beef or lamb.

It was a light to medium body with flavors of cherry and slight earthiness. I picked this bottle up at Aficionado in Perrysburg on sale. It usually retails for $17.99, which is a nice price for this wine.

Read our interview with Seven Artisans winemaker Jeff Miller

Wine For Free -- Well, Sorta

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Here's the deal. I just  got a really nice case of wine -- for free.

I guess some explanation is needed. First of all, if I told my wife I wanted to buy a case of wine I'd go through interrogation worse than any dished out by Homeland Security. Not that my wife doesn't like wine, she does, and we enjoy it together. We don't have a vast stockpile of wine, but I have 20 to 30 bottles on hand (you never know when there'll be a power outage or we'll be snowed in!). She is, however, unlikely to say, "Sure, indulge your whims, pick up a case or two of reserve quality wine."

So how do I end up with the nice case of Sheldrake Point (Finger Lakes) Gewürztraminer? It turns out that this is really a wonderful double-play.

You'll notice in the upper left corner of our page a link to Wine for Haiti. This is a fantastic effort put together by our friends at Palate Press, the top online wine magazine, to help raise money for the relief effort in Haiti through an online wine auction.

Now here's the free part: My wife told me that we needed to make a contribution to the Haiti relief effort. I told her about the wine auction and she basically said we had a choice. I could simply make a designated contribution to the American Red Cross or I could bid in the auction (proceeds of which go 100% directly to the Red Cross Haiti fund).

Hmmm... This was quite a dilemma. Should I simply contribute $100 or more, or should I contribute the exact same amount, going to the same charitable cause, and get a "free" case of wine in recognition as well. As you can imagine, I deliberated on this for many, many, many...  milliseconds.

Wineries and individual wine enthusiasts have contributed wine and wine-related items for the online auction. Here's the link to the auction catalog. Here you will find crazy good deals on wine -- ranging from fine French wines to cases from great Finger Lakes wineries like Heron Hill, Hazlitt, Knapp and others. You'll find vintage wines and also large format wines. There is a 6 liter bottle for auction -- that is the equivalent of eight bottles of wine. At the risk of people bidding against me, I also want to mention what I think is a great deal -- the McGregor Vineyard (Finger Lakes) Reserve Cabernet Franc. The Stag's Leap Collection is from Stag's Leap employees and includes some very special bottles. Here are some of the great offers:

Raphael First Label Merlot

Fine French Sampler

A Pair of Napa Cult Wines

Dunn Vineyard Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon

McGregor Vineyard Reserve Cabernet Franc

A Stag's Leap Collection

The format of the auction is fun and easy. You make your contribution directly to the American Red Cross Haiti relief fund. The e-mail notification will go to Palate Press and they will arrange with the seller to ship your wine to you.

It's simple and it's your chance to contribute to the important work of recovery in Haiti, and reward yourself with some "free" wine for your trouble.

 

Wine Tastings & Events: Week of February 15, 2010

Image of Raptor Ridge Winery via Snooth

Monday, February 15
* Special Event *A special West Coast wine dinner is scheduled 7:00 PM Monday, February 15, at Pasta Fina, 5931 Heatherdowns Blvd., Toledo, (419) 866-0670. The meal will feature six wines paired with courses. Cost is $40 per person and reservations are suggested.

Wednesday, February 17
Anderson's Market, Sylvania, Wine Tasting. 6-8 PM. Close-outs continue:  1. Spann Vineyards Betsy’s Backacher Bottle Blond , 2. Spann Vineyards Betsy’s Backacher Mayacamas Range Red, 3.Spann Vineyards Syrah, 4. Meyer Syrah. Nominal fee.

Beer and Wine Cave, 4400 Heatherdowns, (419) 382-6221. New World vs. Old World Wines. 6-8 PM, $15.

Thursday, February 18
The Andersons, Maumee, Wine Tasting.  5-7 PM. Fireside Wines: 1. Tarrica – Monterey Co. Calf. – Pinot Noir, 2. Atteca – Calatayud, Spain – Old Vines Garnacha {Grenache}, 3. Alexander Valley Vineyards –Sonoma Co. Calf.- Merlot, 4. Hardy’s Whiskers Blake –Australia – Tawny Port. Pay by the sample or $7 for flight. 

The Andersons, Talmadge Road. Wine Tasting, 6-8 PM. A Cruise Through California Wines: 1. Match Book Tinto Rey, Dunnigan Hills; 2. Souverain, Alexander Valley Merlot; 3. Fess Parker Syrah, Santa Barbera; 4. Lyeth Meritage, Sonoma; 5. Vina Robles Cabernet, Paso Robles; 6. Ridge Pagani Ranch Zinfandel, Sonoma; 7. La Storia Petite Sirah, Alexander Valley; 8. Campbell’s Rutherglen Dessert Muscat, Australia 375ml. Nominal fee per sample.

Beer and Wine Cave, 4400 Heatherdowns, (419) 382-6221. New World vs. Old World Wines. 6-8 PM, $15.

Corks Wine and Liquor, Promenade Plaza, 27250 Crossroads Pkwy., Rossford – (419) 872-6800. 6-9 PM.  Stranger in a Strange Land. We all know the classic standards: cab, pinot, syrah, merlot, chardonnay, etc. BORING! Let’s try some strange and unusual varietals grown in even stranger locales. Cost $1 to $3 per sample.

Friday, February 19 
* Special Event * Wine by the Glass Pavilion Winemakers Series, Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion, 2445 Monroe St., 7:00 to 9:30 p.m. Raptor Ridge, Willamette Valley, Oregon. Winery owners Annie Shull and her husband Scott (also the winemaker) have owned Raptor Ridge since 1994 and will be present to talk about the winery. Enjoy four wines, light snacks, and a view of glassmakers working in the Hot Shop.Cost is $15 for museum members and $20 for non-members.

Aficionado Wine and Cigars, The Shoppes at RiverPlace, 26567 N. Dixie Highway, Suite 135, Perrysburg, (419-873-4444). 5:00 – 8:30 p.m. German Wines: 1. Dr. Crusius Pinot Blanc, 2. Louis Guntrum Scheurebe Kabinett, 3. Dr. Fischer Steinbock Riesling, 4. Fritz Windisch Trocken Dornfelder.$10 tasting.

Corks Wine and Liquor, Promenade Plaza, 27250 Crossroads Pkwy., Rossford – (419) 872-6800. 6-9 PM.  Stranger in a Strange Land. We all know the classic standards: cab, pinot, syrah, merlot, chardonnay, etc. BORING! Let’s try some strange and unusual varietals grown in even stranger locales. Cost $1 to $3 per sample. 

Saturday, February 20
Aficionado Wine and Cigars, The Shoppes at RiverPlace, 26567 N. Dixie Highway, Suite 135, Perrysburg, (419-873-4444). 5:00 – 8:30 p.m. German Wines: 1. Dr. Crusius Pinot Blanc, 2. Louis Guntrum Scheurebe Kabinett, 3. Dr. Fischer Steinbock Riesling, 4. Fritz Windisch Trocken Dornfelder.$10 tasting.

The Andersons, Woodville, Wine Tasting. 1-3 PM. Closeouts: 1. Nobilo, 2006, Chardonnay New Zealand; 2. Gysler, 2004, Silvaner Halbtrocken, Germany; 3. Chateau Greysac, 2005, Medoc France; 4. Villa San Juliette, 2006, Shiraz/Cab. Flight $2.

Walt Churchill’s Market, 3320 Briarfield. Maumee, (419) 794-4000. Noon to 5:00 p.m. Rediscovering California Merlot.

[Information on tastings can be sent to TWAV@ATT.NET.]

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