I only drink dry wines. That’s a common refrain echoed in tasting rooms across Michigan and beyond.
Everyone’s tastes are different, of course, but our state’s sweet wines merit another sip. After all, part of the fun of wine tasting is sampling new styles, and sweet wines have only gotten better with time. They’re not all sugar and little else.
“It’s all about the balance between acidity and sugar,” says Coenraad Stassen, the director of winemaking and the estate manager at Brys Estate Vineyard & Winery on the Old Mission Peninsula. “Sweet wines in Michigan have come a long way in the past 20 years. The wines are way more balanced, and the quality is so much better.”
The next time you go wine tasting in Michigan, consider checking out some of these well-crafted sweet wines.
2022 Riesling Reserve, Brys Estate Vineyard & Winery, Old Mission Peninsula
An outstanding Riesling that is well balanced, with notes of stone fruits and slight tones of citrus on the finish. The residual sugar level is 4.6%. Decanter included this 2022 Riesling Reserve among 15 American wines to pair with Thanksgiving dinner last fall.
2022 Brandistar, Youngblood Vineyard, Ray
A fortified sweet wine that is a blend of Prairie Star and Frontenac Blanc — cold-hardy wine grapes — and produced in collaboration with Detroit City Distillery. It has a nice balance of sweetness and acidity, with peach, nectar, and pear on the palate and apricot and wildflower on the nose.
2017 Sweet Folly, Amoritas Vineyards, Lake Leelanau
This is the sweet version of the winery’s popular Mary’s Folly field blend, a mixture of Muscat Ottonel, Auxerrois, and Pinot Blanc. The flavor profile mimics a white port, but this is not a fortified wine. Some floral notes are detectable. The residual sugar is about 10%.
2022 Sweet Riesling, Dablon Vineyards & Winery, Baroda
Winemaker Rudy Shafer describes this sweet Riesling as an Alsatian-style wine, with moderate acidity that balances well with the sweetness. It has flavors of apricot, peach, and honeysuckle, and the residual sugar is 7%.
Foxhole Red, Boyne Valley Vineyards, Petoskey
A sweet red wine can be difficult to find, but Boyne Valley manages to fill that void with its Foxhole Red. It’s a blend of Marquette and Petite Pearl, cold-hardy hybrid grapes that grow well in northern Michigan. Blueberry and raspberry aromas lead to a sweet, juicy finish.
2022 Joy, Verterra Winery, Leland
My own journey to appreciating sweet wines has not been without struggle, but this sparkling wine from Verterra Winery, where I work part time during the tourist season, changed my palate. This nontraditional sparkling wine, a blend of Gewürztraminer and Merlot, is bright pink and has gentle bubbles. Joy is easy on the palate, with berry notes and hints of grapefruit.
Riesling Range
All Rieslings are sweet. That’s a common misconception. Like many other wines, Riesling can fall anywhere on a spectrum from bone dry to very sweet depending on how it’s made.
To help consumers determine just how sweet or dry their wine is, wine producers might use the scale from the International Riesling Foundation on the label on the back of their bottles. There are four categories: dry, medium dry, medium sweet, and sweet. The scale includes a small arrow pointing at the wine’s particular level.
“The scale really helps people visually get a sense of where the wine is,” says Lee Lutes, head winemaker at Black Star Farms, which uses the scale for its Rieslings. “It can help people determine whether the wine is sweet enough or dry enough for them.”
Black Star Farms, which has tasting rooms on both the Old Mission and Leelanau peninsulas, produces a variety of Rieslings, from dry to sweet to dessert-style. Its 2017 Arcturos Dry Riesling was named best wine at the annual Canberra International Riesling Challenge in Australia in 2018.
Greg Tasker, a former arts and entertainment editor at The Detroit News, is a freelance writer based in Traverse City. He writes frequently about Michigan’s wine industry and works part time at a winery on the Leelanau Peninsula. He is level 1 certified by the Wine & Spirit Education Trust through the Napa Valley Wine Academy and is wrapping up WSET level 2.
A version of this article originally appeared in the 2024 Michigan Wine Country magazine.
Facebook Comments