Partnership dispute
turns ugly in Niagara

Last week, news trickled across the Canadian border about a strange chain of events unfolding at Niagara boutique winery Alvento.

Wines in Niagara reported that the winery landed in court to resolve a partnership falling-out between its hands-on operators, Tuscan transplants Bruno and Elyane Moos, and their Quebec-based business partner, collector Morrie Neiss.

The court's Solomonic verdict: pass the knife, let's carve the baby. The judge ordered the winery sold to a third party to be named later (at a probable fire-sale price), with the feuding partners to divvy up the proceeds.

UPDATE, APRIL 22: One of the "six wines to die for" detailed below -- Chateau Fontaine's 2010 Leelanau Peninsula Gewurztraminer -- took the trophy yesterday for Best White Wine at California's Pacific Rim Wine Competition. It's not yet been released to the public.

Twenty-two Michigan wineries showed up to pour at the Michigan Wine Showcase in Bloomfield Hills on Monday, April 11, under the auspices of the state's Grape and Wine Council, abetted by Master Sommeliers Claudia Tyagi and Madeline Triffon.

For many of us, this was first contact with a critical mass from the much-touted 2010 vintage. Straight to the bottom line: the 2010 whites live up to the hype. The best of them combine the ripe aromatics, flavors and body of 2007 with the underlying food-friendly acidity of a typical Michigan vintage.

Chateau Fontaine's Dan Matthies

Not everyone at the Showcase poured 2010. In fact, a majority of the wines, and all of the reds, came from the less-heralded 2008 and 2009 crops, plus a few late arrivals from 2007. Some were also tank samples, or "behind the table" pre-releases that didn't yet show their best. Time constraints also kept me from tasting every wine in the room.

But overall it's clear that most winemakers took advantage of 2010's early spring and long summer to ripen their grapes fully, yet surprisingly few showed traces of the over-ripeness that causes acid to drop out and tips a wine into flabbiness. Definitely a top vintage.

Here are a half-dozen wines from the Showcase that whipped my palate to attention. Half are 2010 whites, and all but the first are new releases that may not yet have made it to winery websites. Some are already available, others arrive soon, as noted. 

L. Mawby "Consort", Leelanau Peninsula. Not a new release, but sometimes it's easy to take long-time members of Larry Mawby's bubbly family for granted, especially those you haven't tasted in a while. This off-dry "Sec" counterpart to his "Brut" Blanc de Blanc arrives with full Methode Champenoise pedigree, from Leelanau Peninsula Chardonnay grapes. The slight sweetness enhances the rich, creamy side of the varietal's apple flavors -- more toward Golden Delicious than fresh-picked Granny Smith. Something to serve alongside steamed lobster with drawn butter, or equally satisfyng on its own.

I spent "A Day in the Vineyard" last Sunday, leading a group visit to three southeastern Michigan vineyards / wineries, in cooperation with Michigan Agritours. We were out to sample ready-to-pick grapes from the vine and watch freshly-crushed juice all abubble in its fermenters.

Memo to self: To instantly grasp the relationship between the flavor of grapes as an agricultural crop and their value-added vinous offspring, NOTHING beats chowing down on a healthy handful of Gewurztraminer at Glaciers Edge Farms. Just remember to spit the pits; these ain't no Thompson Seedless.

Then it was on to the cellars and tasting rooms of Sandhill Crane and Chateau Aeronautique to sample their wines -- all decent, a few very good.

Finally, back on the bus for the run home, and the inevitable question I'd been dreading:

"Those wines were great, better than we'd expected. Where can we buy them?"

Tonight I'm speaking at a dinner in Grand Rapids that features wines from Brys Estate and Gills Pier. Sometime after dinner, I expect the same question.

"Where can I buy them?"

For the top wines in the state, my answer is invariably the same: "You'll have to visit the winery, or order them from the winery's website."

Which, to all but the most dedicated consumers, means they'll never taste those wines again.

There's a connection between that fact and the articles from Dan Berger and the LA Times on MichWine's front page that bring up the disrespect Michigan wines get from residents of their native state. If consumers can't easily find and enjoy Michigan's top wines, then most of us will judge Michigan wines by those we're able to find: in the neighborhood supermarket or party store.

And most of those aren't the wines I'd like our state's industry judged by, even if they do represent some of our largest producers. After all, we don't critique California's wine industry based on labels like Gallo, Franzia and Two Buck Chuck.

By now, I've heard every standard responses a hundred times. Most of Michigan's best wines come in tiny quantities that couldn't go into widespread distribution. Many of the best wineries are small and relatively inefficient, and could never afford the discounts required to sell at wholesale.

None of these are wrong. They all have validity.

Still, as I get ready to walk into Grand Rapids' University Club for tonight's dinner, I can't help but wish I could point the folks I'll meet tonight down the street to buy a bottle of 2008 Chateau Aeronautique Cabernet Franc Reserve or 2007 Gills Pier Cabernet / Merlot.

Our Michigan wine industry's reputation would be much the better for it.

Last Friday I popped in to see Larry Mawby, near Suttons Bay. He was busy-as-ever in his cluttered-as-ever winery backroom -- tanks, lab equipment, desks, multiple computers and screens jumbled into a way-too-small space that looked like its last top-to-bottom cleaning came a decade back. Maybe longer.

The day before, on September 10, he began to pick Leelanau Peninsula grapes for L. Mawby sparklers -- his second-earliest harvest start-date ever. He mentioned that this year's weather totally scrambled the vineyards' usual ripening order. Since grapes for sparkling wine start life with way less sugar than their non-bubbly brethren, he's among the first to kick off northern Michigan's 2010 grape harvest.

Being first in the region isn't an unfamiliar role for Larry. By my reckoning, this is his 33rd harvest on Leelanau. His vines went in shortly after Bernie Rink's at Boskydel, but before just about anyone else on the Peninsula.

In the early years, he made eccentric still wines with whimsical names and poetry on the label. By today's standards, most of them weren't very good. And the poetry? Well, I've frequently called him Michigan's answer to Randall Grahm, of California's Bonny Doon. Some of his articles for Michigan Wine Country magazine were classic; they're still preserved on his website .

Over the years, I've imposed on him several times, and he's seldom been too busy to help out. In 1998, he accepted an invitation to be our first-ever winemaker-in-residence at the annual MoCool wine bash. When MichWine started in 2007, he was the go-to guy for a piece to extol northern Michigan wine country. His response -- the blank-verse "Ode to the Leelanau" -- remains one of MichWine's most-visited pages.

That's a common theme when you mention Larry in northern wine circles: he's always available to help. In an industry whose public face of goodwill among friendly competitors can mask behind-the-scenes backbiting and petty jealousies, I've seldom heard an ill word about Larry. Instead, other winemakers go out of their way to talk about how he proffered much-valued advice when they were starting up, or lent them a piece of equipment, or offered to make their sparkling wine at his winery.

Over the years, some things changed. His wines improved, developed bubbles, and began to receive national recognition. He married. He wrote less. He fought and beat cancer. He took on a partner.

These days, he's mayor of his home town, Suttons Bay. And his M. Lawrence brand -- made in a separate facility where it gets its bubbles from secondary fermentation in tanks -- brought the business success that had previously eluded him, especially through its most talked-about label, "Sex". Larger production quantities require him to import some of the M. Lawrence base wines from outside Michigan, although the L. Mawby brand remains Leelanau-grown.

On this visit, Larry mentioned that he now distributes wine to ten states. But he'll need to slap a new name on the latest M. Lawrence creation -- "Detroit" -- if he wants to sell it outside Michigan. It seems that Federal regulators -- who didn't bat an eyelash over approval of "Sex" -- recently decided that the new wine's name falsely implies it's made in the City of Detroit. It won't be allowed to cross state lines without a different moniker.

It's nice to know that some things never change.

A funny thing happened on the way to my September column in The Ann Arbor Chronicle.

The column highlighted Spotted Dog Winery, a micro-winery in Saline that successfully markets its kit-made wines through a raft of local retail stores. It recently announced an expansion that will triple its capacity to 3000 cases, in order to meet demand for its wines -- and managed to land admiring press coverage not only on annarbor.com, but a filmed-on-site segment on Detroit's Channel 2 .

Whatever your take on kit wines -- and mine isn't especially positive -- when it comes to selling them, many small, from-scratch Michigan wineries would do well to emulate Spotted Dog's example.

They've assembled a smart package of local-oriented branding, attractive labels that jump off the shelf, and slick marketing -- including a retail store display that probably looks irresistible to many grocers and some specialty stores eager to offer more made-in-Michigan products. (Never mind that most of the grapes grew in California or Australia.)

They've also hired a salesperson to represent them to retailers throughout the metro Detroit area; their website claims you can now buy Spotted Dog wine at close to four dozen stores.The winery's co-owner, John Olsen, plans to grow that further once the expanded winery begins operation, in the next few months.

Kit wineries do have some built-in advantages that allow them to concentrate on marketing. Their cost for raw materials is low and highly predictable. They don't spend any time worrying about weather, vintage variations, and growing (or buying) grapes. They don't have to pay for expensive crushers or presses. Their consistent-quality wines pretty much make themselves, without tweaks. Inventory can expand quickly if needed to meet demand, whatever the season.

But from-scratch wineries start with a number of advantages, too. They can brand their labels with grape varietals, vintages and geographic identities. They can schedule attractive events around the seasonal growing and winemaking cycles. Local wine trails and the state Grape and Wine Council offer them numerous marketing opportunities.

And, when everything else is said and done, there's one overriding advantage: well made from-scratch wines taste better than anything that comes out of a pre-packaged, pasteurized kit.

It's almost as if Spotted Dog knew that it had to work harder on its own to survive in the marketplace -- and taught itself to have the loudest bark on the block.

So why don't more small Michigan wineries do a first-rate job packaging and marketing their wines? And why can I find Spotted Dog in more stores around Ann Arbor than most other Michigan wineries of a similar size, including those right in my own backyard?

What do you think?

So now it's come to this.

Last week, New York wine writers Lenn Thompson and Evan Dawson announced that they would no longer judge at large, medal-awarding wine competitions. They urged fellow journalists to follow suit.

Thompson and Dawson aren't just a couple of basement bloggers grabbing for a headline. Their consumer-oriented wine site, the New York Cork Report, is considered the gold standard by many of us who toil in the backroad vineyards of regional wine journalism. They've got the American Wine Blog Award to prove it.

Lenn Thompson and Evan Dawson

So when they speak, a lot of industry and media players pay attention. When they dropped their Shermanesque manifesto just a few days after New York's annual Gotham-sized self-congratulatory wine bash -- and its controversial pick of a sweet, sparkling Riesling as top wine -- the timing seemed more than coincidental.

The rationale for their stance is a compendium of complaints against competitions made by many, including this writer, in recent years. Distilled to their essence, these encompass two categories:

• Competitions have multiplied like tribbles and now hand out gazillions of medals annually. No one, least of all the average consumer, can possibly track the quality of each competition, who judges at them, or how many medals they award. Their primary function seems to be minting medals in numbers sufficient for wineries to tout their wares as medal winners -- as often as not, dishing inaccurate or misleading information to consumers in the process. The money quote: "Ultimately these medals and discussions of them have become nothing more than white noise, like static on your television."


• The judging behind all those medals is seriously suspect, since competition judges don't apply objective, consistent standards. Thompson and Dawson draw heavily on the much-cited studies by academic (and winemaker) Robert Hodgson, claiming to show that competition judges can't reliably replicate their blind-tasted evaluations, and the medals they award regress toward the random. The result? As Thompson and Dawson put it, "If you make a competent wine, you can enter enough competitions and that wine will almost certainly win gold eventually."