The 2^nd Annual Northern Michigan Wine Summit which took place in Traverse City on Monday, April 28 at the Park Place Hotel featured some 150 industry VIPs – including restaurant & wine shop owners, educators, area wine distributors, tourism partners and the media –who learned from a panel of experets the benefits of selling and supporting the local wine industry. Chef Eric Villages, host of the PBS Show “Fork in the Road” and author of the Michigan Notable Cookbook of the same name, served as moderator for the day’s activities. Panelists included:

• Richard Leahy – East Coast Editor and Director of Programs for Vineyard Winery & Management
• Kristin Kitely – Food and Beverage Director for Crystal Mountain Resort
• Madelline Triffon – Master Sommelier and beverage director for Matt Prentice Restaurant Group
• Claudia Tyagi – Master Sommelier and private wine consultant
• John State – Executive Chef for the Grand Rapids JW Marriott

Here is the text I gave to the audience on the topic of “Michigan’s range of rieslings“:

I’d like to thank the Northwest Michigan Vintners for inviting me here today to speak on Michigan’s “Range of Rieslings.” Jancis Robinson MW and Hugh Johnson, two of the most respected winemakers in the world, both unashamedly believe that Riesling is the top quality white wine grape in the world. There are three basic reasons for this. First, it has pronounced yet elegant, even delicate fruit character. Second, this fine fruit character is balanced by bracing acidity. Third, Riesling is highly sensitive to local nuances of terroir, and so will express a subtle range of flavors and textures as an expression of specific vineyard sites and regions. When planted in cool regions, no matter how fruity the wine, Riesling will always balance the forward fruitiness with sometimes breathtaking acidity, which creates an ideally balanced white wine, complete in itself, without the need for the winemaker smoke-and-mirrors of oak or lees stirring to manipulate style.

Riesling is also the most versatile classic white wine grape. The range of Riesling wines includes German sekt (sparkling Riesling), low alcohol, fruity and high acid Rieslings from the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer region in Germany, moderate alcohol, moderately fruity Rieslings with residual sugar from the Rhein regions of Germany; semi-dry/semi-sweet moderate alcohol Rieslings from New York’s Finger Lakes, Washington’s Columbia Valley and California’s Monterey County; high alcohol, non-residual sugar wines from Alsace, Austria, top vineyard sites in Germany and Clare/Eden Valleys in Australia; and very sweet, low alcohol (high acid) icewines from Germany, Canada, Finger Lakes and Columbia Valley.

Riesling is also the fastest-growing white wine in the U.S., up 27% in 2007 by total volume sales, in large part thanks to Millennials. If you can grow quality riesling, you’re on the cutting edge of a big trend on the national (and international) wine scene.

Michigan is fortunate (especially northwest Michigan) in having a natural terroir for producing world-class Riesling. What you need is a cool climate on the verge of cold, but not too cold for absolute winter temperatures or early spring frosts to damage the vines on a regular basis. At the same time you need enough heat to ripen the grapes slowly while retaining both the freshness of fruit character and the lively acidity so crucial to classic Riesling style. Part of the reason California has ignored Riesling until it suddenly got profitable recently is that everyone knows that except for the cooler regions of Monterey, Spring Mountain and some pockets of Anderson Valley, even the North Coast of California is too warm to produce Riesling with enough acidity to make a classic style.

Most of Michigan’s climate is normally too cold for Riesling or other vinifera (European) varieties, but thanks to localized lake effects in the southwest and here near Traverse City, classic cool climate grape varieties like riesling, pinot noir, chardonnay, pinot gris and cabernet franc can be grown successfully on the Leelanau and Old Mission Peninsulas, producing wines reminiscent of the famous European regions; Champagne, Burgundy, and most of all, the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer region of Germany.

Today we’ll talk about and taste the range of rieslings produced here in northwest Michigan. We have six wines running the gamut of styles from steely-bright, fresh, bone-dry, to medium-dry sparkling, to semi-dry/semi-sweet and finally sweet. These six wines were selected from 23 possible local wines to represent the best in quality in each of these styles. As it happened, there was a fairly even split between the wines of Leelanau and Old Mission Peninsulas, and one was a regional blend.

First, the two dry rieslings; one from the excellent 2007 vintage, and a reserve dry riesling from 2004, another fine vintage. Both dry, you’ll find these still very different in style, largely because of the effect of bottle age on the older wine. Anyone who still thinks rieslings are soft, flowery and only fit for “girly men” is encouraged to take a big swig of wine #1 and think again (hint: pH is 2.93). Wine #1 has the minerality reminiscent of fine Austrian rieslings, while wine #2 has green and yellow apple fruit with dense richness balanced by lively fresh minerality typical of the Saar/Ruwer, the cooler part of the Mosel Valley. These two wines show how versatile NW Michigan riesling can be even within the dry style.

Between dry and semi-dry/semi-sweet rieslings we’ll have a semi-dry sparkling riesling as a palate cleanser. Sparkling wine is a category that Michigan does very well, and combine that with riesling, another local specialty, and it’s win/win. This category is called “sekt” in Germany and is a nice, more fruity and less austere alternative to method champenoise sparklers.

In the semi-dry/semi-sweet category we have another bright, fresh wine from the ’07 vintage, which seems dry at first from high acidity but has delicate floral and green apple fruit to match. The next wine is from the fine ’05 vintage and has yellow apple in the nose with more forward pineapple and peach fruit and round rich mid-palate, partially features of bottle age, reminding me of a fine auslese from Mosel-Saar-Ruwer in Germany. The final wine is “sweet” in a relative term. While it has residual sugar over six percent, the acidity is bracingly high, offering delicate balance and racy, fresh zestiness in contrast to the hints of botrytis/apricot in the nose, with amazingnly concentrated yellow apple and ripe peach balanced by a lingering rapier acidity, recalling an auslese from the famous Maximin Gruenhaeuser estate in the Ruwer.

In my notes I sometimes found similarities to Austria’s Wachau valley and Eden and Clare Valleys in Australia for lime/minerality, but most often, found descriptors for green and yellow apple, white flowers, racy minerality, and hints of petrol and smoky flint which took me to the Saar-Ruwer districts of the Mosel region in Germany. This is a classic region for fresh, delicate yet complex rieslings that so far has not been replicated outside the region; you are invited to make your own comparisons with the six fine NW Michigan rieslings here today and hopefully with others in the future. Thank you.

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