Wine Atlas

State sales are up 80 percent over last 8 years

Shawn Walters started in the wine industry as a "cellar rat" more than a decade ago. Now he's responsible for crafting some of Michigan's most popular wines.

Walters works at Leelanau Cellars in Omena and he'll be hard at work this month; grape harvest will find him toiling seven days a week, up to 16 hours a day.

The effort is needed to meet a growing demand for the Leelanau County winery's product, part of a continuing surge both in vineyard acreage and wine production across the state.

"It can be smooth, or it can be very difficult," Walters said of the harvest that in some areas began last week.

Nowhere is the growth of the region's wine industry more evident than at Leelanau Cellars. The 31-year-old winery will open a new tasting room this fall in the former Harbor Bar along M-22 in Omena, and it planted almost 40 acres of new vineyards along M-204 between Suttons Bay and Lake Leelanau.

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Walking into a wine shop or liquor store to find a bottle of wine can be overwhelming. There are so many options. Consumers may know their favourite varietal, but how can they tell if they are getting a good wine? And what's the difference between a $12 and a $40 bottle of merlot?

For Antelope Ridge proprietor Olivier Combret, the formula is easy: the cost of production plus the quantity determine the sticker price for wines. In his winery quality also plays a part, but that is not always the case.

Paying a lot for a bottle of wine does not necessarily mean it's going to be good, he said. It can just mean that production costs were high.

"It's possible to spend $100 on a bad bottle of wine," said Combret. "The cost of production will not dictate the quality of wine."

The Oliver winemaker said he tries to control his costs of production, while making top-quality wines. Often times, Combret said small wineries offer better quality wines at a lower price because they are not forced to incur the costs of larger operations. The winery can, therefore, pass on more savings to the consumer, he said.

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CAPE TOWN - Ducks, wasps and beetles are pioneer viticulturalist Johnathan Grieve’s insect killers of choice in his goal of creating one of South Africa’s first entirely organic wine farms. A flock of about 40 ducks patrol Avondale, Grieve’s farm in the Paarl area of the fertile Cape winelands, daily picking snails off the precious vines.

Predatory wasps and beetles are released to take care of another pest -- mealy bugs.

‘I find that making use of these natural predators works much more effectively, and is a lot cheaper,’ said Grieve, who no longer uses any chemical insecticides.

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