We were staying in one of the far eastern suburbs of the Detroit area, because of the wedding, and the next day we were going to celebrate the monthly birthdays, which we do often at our home, but one of my Bride’s Sisters wanted to do it at her house. So as we were packed up from the hotel, my Bride wanted to pick up another bottle of wine for one of her cousins to enjoy. I was not aware of the area, and lately when we are out and about, I will check my phone to see if there are any wineries in the area, because wineries have been growing in numbers here in Michigan. My phone led us to Michigan by the Bottle.

The shop had the feel of a tasting room at a small winery. There was a large selection of wines on the walls and racks around the shop, and then there were the usual gift type items as well. The name of the shop is actually derived from a wine blog, and now the owners of the blog have opened three tasting rooms for retail. As the name implies they only feature Michigan wines and some of the wineries are small start up companies, some are boutique wineries and some are full blown wineries. I was looking at some of the brands and smiled because we had been to some of them, and I pointed out to my Bride a bottle and she remembered that we had been to one of the wineries in Jackson the year before and even had lunch there. Since we were not going to be there for long as we had other errands before the birthday party, we opted for the “Mini Flight.”

I will discuss two of the wines that we tried. The first wine was Chateau de Leelanau Muse 2012 from Leelanau County near Traverse City. This was “frizzante” and our server informed us that the wine was carbonated, rather than even the Charmat Method. The wine was a blend of Pinot Grigio and Bianca. Bianca was a new grape for me; in fact it is very new and only recently developed in Hungary and is known as a Cold Hardy grape varietal, suitable for the colder climates. This wine was listed on sheet as Limited Availability and we did pass on it, as I was not keen on the aftertaste, and since we have had such great sparkling wines from Michigan, I was not impressed. The second wine that we tried was Verterra Winery Rose of Pinot Noir 2015 also from the Leelanau area and a new winery to me. This wine had limited time in Stainless Steel before bottling and it had a very young taste to it and it was slightly sweeter then what I expected. All in all, I wish that we would have had more time to spend there, as there were some other wines that I would have been interested in trying, so maybe I shall try again at one of their other locations that is closer to my house.