Welcome to Michigan By The Bottle

Welcome to the Michigan By the Bottle Blog. My goal with this blog is to explore and share all of the wines that Michigan has to offer. This blog was born out of my frustration with the lack of accessible information regarding Michigan wines for the every day consumer. There are plenty of websites for the various Michigan wine trails and vintners’ associations, but they are more promotion driven and most haven’t been updated in months.

I became interested in wine while in college. As an underage college student, I found you were less likely to be asked for identification when you ordered wine, than when you ordered beer or liquor. Like many wine drinkers, I started with white zinfandel (often by the box) and gradually began to expand my palette to other varietals.

I fell in love with wine during a trip to Northern Michigan and the wineries around Traverse City. Living in the Detroit suburbs, I had no idea that great wine was being made in my home state. After a weekend visiting the wineries and tasting rooms on Old Mission Peninsula and Leelenau Peninsula, I was hooked.

Being able to talk to the wine makers and the winery staff was thrilling for someone just getting into wine. It gave me a greater appreciation for what goes into making the perfect bottle.

After ten years of sampling wines from California, Washington, France, Italy, and Spain, I still find myself coming back to Michigan wines. This blog gives me an outlet for something that I passionate about and allows me to share that passion with others.

Things you will find in this blog:

• Links to news articles and feature stories written about the wine industry in Michigan. I strongly believe that Michigan wine fans want to read about the wines and wineries made in their state.  I hope people will come here to get that information.
• Tasting notes on wine. My wife and I will share our observations on a whole host of wines produced in Michigan. You’ll get an interesting perspective because she prefers sweet white wines and I prefer drier reds. We hope you will be able to read our tasting notes without getting out a wine dictionary to see what we are talking about.
• Original content – we plan to write some feature articles on various wineries and happenings in the industry.

Things you will not find in this blog:

• Points based ratings – I’ll leave formal wine ratings for Robert Parker and the wine establishment.
• Wines for sale – We are not using this blog to sell wine (or anything for that matter.)

We really hope to update this blog several times per week. Please understand that this is a work in progress. Rather than waiting until it is perfect, I wanted to start sharing my passion as soon as possible. The look and feel of the blog will change several times before we get it right. I hope you will come back to follow our progress.  

I look forward to hearing your comments and getting to know other Michigan wine fans.