Sustainable Wine Tasting
While cruising for new places to travel (and drink wine) in the hopefully near, post-pandemic future, I came across the charming Leelanau Valley. I was so intrigued by the fact that Michigan - yes Michigan has a thriving wine tasting scene! Well, it turns out it makes way more sense than I would have guessed. The rolling hills surrounded by Lake Michigan are gorgeous and a great environment for vineyards and fruit orchards to grow! And as I perused the various wineries, I came across the beautiful Green Bird Cellars. Digging deeper into their website, I also realized that the founders (Tim and Betsy) had moved there from New Orleans and Tim is a nola native! I had to investigate. : ) The vineyard is on a 15 acre working farm just two miles south of the picturesque waterfront community of Northport. They make wine, hard ciders and offer other farm fare like pastured eggs and organic veggies. And the best part is that the farm and vineyard are cared for in the most sustainable way possible. Instead of using harsh chemicals, they opt for natural ingredients such as neem oil, seaweed, probiotic culture, fermented herbal teas, and kaolin clay to feed and protect their plants. They strongly believe that by using a holistic approach to farming they create a relationship with the earth, and the fruit it provides. Right on! Now let’s ask Betsy some questions!
Tell us how you got from NOLA to Northern Michigan?
We are both former New Orleans public school teachers who left teaching in 2015 to start an urban farm in our backyard in the lower 9th ward. In 2018, we moved up to Northern Michigan, where I was raised (my husband grew up in New Orleans) to expand our farm project and ended up purchasing 15 acres of grapevines in Leelanau County wine country.
Epiphany: How did you go from school teachers to farmers?!
After working in public schools around the country for close to a decade, my husband and I decided it was time to look for a new project. We quit our jobs and camped around the country for nearly 10 months. Over that period we realized that we wanted to focus on living a more self-sufficient lifestyle that gave back to the earth and regenerative agriculture was our chosen outlet. We ran a small organic egg and vegetable CSA out of our backyard in the Holy Cross neighborhood of the Lower 9th ward for three years before moving up to Northern Michigan. It was difficult to leave New Orleans but we wanted to expand our dream of farming with larger animals to help heal the soil and the gulf south wasn't the right fit for our project. We moved up to Northport, Michigan near my hometown of Traverse City and have been farming here on our vineyard with sheep, chickens and turkeys since we arrived in late 2018.
Epiphany: What is your day to day schedule like on the farm?
The beauty of farm life is that the day-to-day is always different. After the chickens are let out of their coop and all the animals are fed and watered, the daily tasks are based on the needs of the season. Winter here is the season of rest and brainstorming but it is also when we finish our wines and ciders and do mountains of paperwork (taxes, boo!). Spring and summer are when the earth comes alive again and the farming is in full swing. The vineyard and orchard need to be pruned, composted, mowed, weed-whacked. The animals begin rotating through pasture. The wines and ciders are bottled and kegged. The tasting room at the winery opens up and we start welcoming guests to experience the farm and taste our wines. Fall is an incredibly busy tourist season up here -- we like to call our visitors "leaf-peepers" -- and includes our grape harvest, which is no little feat. We pick, crush and ferment the grapes on-site. Once the juice is in tanks, then the work of winemaking begins. About that time, it turns into winter and we start all over!
Epiphany: What's the best selling wine in your collection? Which is your favorite?
The most important thing to know about our wines is that they are all 100% estate-grown, which means we don't bring in any outside grapes. We grow 15 acres of grapes, so we will never be a huge winery with national distribution. That's never been our goal -- we want to nurture the soil and the natural world while also producing organically-farmed, small-batch wines of the highest quality. We are focused on cold-climate wines, which produce and taste best in our region so the grapes we grow are Riesling, Pinot Gris (the French name for pinot grigio), Gewurztraminer, Chardonnay, Traminette, Vignoles, Blaufränkisch (a peppery red) and a little bit of Merlot. My favorite is constantly changing because wine is alive -- every day in the bottle, it changes -- but I love our Gewurztraminer. It is bone dry, with no residual sugar, which is unusual for Gewurz (it's known as a sweet wine) but it means you take floral, fruit and spice notes. It's a deliciously complex white wine and pairs especially well with spicy food but is truly delicious on its own. We also produce crisp, fruity, French-style dry ciders, which taste good to me every day of year.
Epiphany: Green Bird cellars looks like an awesome weekend getaway from NOLA (sans covid)! Where do you typically advise folks to stay and dine while in the area?
Traverse City is the closest big town to Northport and boasts all the conveniences you expect from a city, but for the true experience I really recommend staying in Leelanau County. There are few places left in America that aren't home to malls, billboards and fast-food restaurants, but the community of Leelanau County has strongly opposed this type of development for a long time, so there are local restaurants, boutiques, B&Bs. It's the land time forgot, in the best possible way.
Epiphany: Do you agree with the comparison between Detroit and New Orleans?
Detroit is about 5 hours from Northport, so we don't make it down there regularly but I see one primary similarity between the cities -- there is strong local pride in Detroit and there are people who deeply believe in preserving the history of the city, just like in New Orleans. The primary difference is that New Orleans is best traveled by bike or foot and in Detroit you drive everywhere. Motor City, baby!
Here’s how we’d play it Carnival style: Impress your friends with a bottle of tasty Leelanau wine for all your Mardi Gras pre game activities!
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