A wine-tasting weekend in southwest Michigan

Seven women in my family were planning a girls weekend to celebrate my sister Nancy’s 60th birthday. We rented an Airbnb for three nights in St. Joseph, Michigan, the heart of southwest Michigan’s wine country. Togetherness was the point of the weekend, but as long as we’d be going to wine tastings, I figured I should learn something about wine.

When Nancy heard that I was checking out websites to educate myself, she laughed and said, “Don’t take it so seriously. The wines won’t be very good.” Nancy has been on wine tours in Napa Valley and knows wines — at least better than I do — but I suspected there was snobbishness in her comment and kept studying.

Remember the five S’s of wine tasting, multiple websites said. 

See. Pause to look before drinking. A lighter white wine is sweeter, a yellower  white is dryer. (Dry means little or no sugar.) Reds are fuller bodied as they get darker.

Swirl. Keeping the glass on the table, hold it by the stem and move it in circles to release aromas. Look for “legs” — the streaks of wine that stream down the side. Legs indicate more alcohol, sugar content, and viscosity (thicker consistency), not higher quality. 

Smell. Put your nose up to the glass and inhale, trying to identify aromas that come from the grapes, such as fruits and flowers, and from the winemaking process, such as vanilla and spices. 

Sip. Swish the wine around in your mouth, noticing the flavors, the amount of dryness, and the viscosity.

Savor. The lingering sensations on your tongue and in the back of your throat are called the finish. A long and complex finish indicates a quality wine.

It didn’t take long at the tastings for my attention to the 5 S’s to wane. Once I started to mellow from the alcohol, I just enjoyed myself. As Nancy had added after expressing her expectations for the wine, “We’re going mostly for the camaraderie.”  

Over two days we went to seven wineries out of the more than four dozen in southwest Michigan. We started with a tour at Dablon Vineyards and Winery in Baroda, seeing vineyards with different varieties of grape vines; stainless steel fermentation tanks; and oak barrels where some wines, mostly reds, are aged.

The wineries are just minutes apart, and it’s easy to put together a route that doesn’t require a lot of driving. Except for the scheduled tour, we simply showed up everywhere. Sommeliers (I suppose they are called that) gave us sheets with the wineries’ offerings listed in categories like dry white, dry red, sweet white, sweet red, and rosé. We each chose four or five and were poured samples (a flight) of about three ounces for $15.

If we’d stayed with the sommeliers and asked questions, I might have learned more, but we wanted to enjoy the beautiful weather and took our flights outside. I did try to detect flavors and aromas but usually couldn’t. Since my alcohol tolerance is low, I skipped some tastings and had a flight of hard cider at one place, but my companions were up for multiple wine tastings.

By our last stop on Sunday afternoon, at the Round Barn Winery, we’d had had our fill of tastings and opted for a sangria or another iced drink. Live music was playing outdoors, cornhole games were in progress, and children ran around as their parents sipped drinks. 

Southwest Michigan was featured in a winereview.com article headlined “The Next Frontier of World-Class American Wine.” The region’s winemakers benefit from a lake effect that provides longer and warmer growing seasons than elsewhere in the Midwest. The region also has nutrient-rich soil and more than enough natural rainfall. Ambitious winemakers are experimenting with new varietals to augment the area’s traditional crisp whites. 

Nancy conceded that some of the wines were good and went home with three bottles. I bought only one because I’m happy with wines from Trader Joe’s for under $5 a bottle. Saying that may be admitting that I didn’t refine my palate on the trip. But I still had a great time.