Celebrating Chrissy’s Birthday With A Tour Of The Wine Country Of Southwest Michigan

Posted on December 06, 2009 in Special Events | 1 comment

Get too close to the Michigan border in Indiana, and you’ll start seeing billboard advertisements for wineries.  We’ve seen them before and always wanted to try out the “Wine Trail“.  Chrissy’s birthday was coming up, and she asked if we could go to Southwest Michigan for a wine tasting tour to celebrate.  I was short on amazing birthday gift ideas, so I agreed.  We had wanted to do that for a while anyway.

We looked into our options on the internet and then I made the arrangements for the tour.  We stayed at the Harbor Grand Hotel in New Buffalo, just over the Indiana border.  This minimized our driving time, but also gave us a nice place to stay with plenty of options for food.  There are plenty of cafes and pubs in New Buffalo, despite its small size, and it’s not too busy in the off season.

The touring company, Fruitful Vine, sent over a GMC Yukon to pick us up for the day.  It was good that we didn’t have to drive ourselves!  For one, we didn’t know where to go, and two, we wouldn’t want to drive around after sampling so much wine.  Our guide, Allison, told us all about the area and the history of each winery as we visited them.  In all, we hit about seven wineries and sampled a little at each one.

One of my favorites was Round Barn Winery and Brewery, where we got to try several wines, a bit of their award-winning Divine vodka and some of their micro-brew beers like Cocoa Stout and Aged Oak IPA.  Their tasting room is in an actual Amish round barn, but they remodeled the interior into a modern wine tasting room.  The prices were very reasonable and we picked up half a case of assorted wine.

Some other nice ones were Tabor Hill and Karma Vista.  Tabor Hill Winery has an upscale restaurant onsite and also carries gourmet chocolate.  The chocolates were incredible in both taste and presentation.  I would like to try the restaurant next time we’re out that way, but we had a schedule to keep.  We did take a tour of their winery and got to see how the wines were made and bottled.

Karma Vista Winery is set up on a hill overlooking the vineyard.  They have some very sweet wines, including some of our new favorites like Starry Starry Night, and the prices are very inexpensive.  We talked with the owners for a bit too.  The views from the tasting room were amazing, even though it was snowing a little.  I would love to go back and try this again in the summer when the vines are green.

The Harbor Grand Hotel was smaller than I thought, but I like the Arts & Crafts style of their interiors.  They offer complimentary s’mores on the veranda at night.  Chrissy and I huddled around the fire pit and roasted marshmallows together in the cold.  They also sold Ben & Jerry’s ice cream at the front desk, which we enjoyed the night before going home.  The room was nice too, with a fireplace and a whirlpool tub.

Other than that, we tried to relax as much as possible.  I can’t remember relaxing that much in recent years.  Chrissy had a great time.  Once we got home, we completely stocked our wine rack, but still had a lot of wine left to store.  We bought about three cases of wine on our trip!  We should be good for wine until this summer, when we’ll have to plan another Michigan Wine Trail excursion.

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