Tuesday 3 October 2006
Region's vineyards are booming
By Wine Atlas, Tuesday 3 October 2006 :: Wine - United-States
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.
