Joel Goldberg

For over 40 years, Ann Arbor wine retailer Village Corner was a fixture on South University, near the University of Michigan’s Central Campus, until it closed last November to make way for a student high-rise at 601 S. Forest.

Dick Scheer, an iconic figure in Michigan wine circles, owned the store that entire time. When it closed, Scheer stashed his inventory in temporary quarters, took his Terminator turn – “I’ll be back!” – and pledged to reopen shortly in a venue with better parking, as he told Sandra Silfven of the Detroit News.

Then, nothing. Scheer went to ground, keeping his own counsel as he sought a new location, to the not-infrequent exasperation of long-time customers and members of the media alike.

Until last week, when the website of Michigan’s Liquor Control Commission (LCC) spilled the beans: on March 17, Village Corner applied to relocate its beverage licenses to another campus-adjacent address.

North Campus, that is.

The new location, at 1747 Plymouth Road in The Courtyard Shops, sits between No Thai! restaurant and Jet’s Pizza, in a storefront formerly occupied by Tanfastic tanning salon.

At 1200 square feet, the store would give Village Corner significantly more display space for wine than the constantly-cramped South University location. And, yes, there’s parking just outside the front door.

Village Corner, formerly located on South University, has leased space in The Courtyard Shops between No Thai! and Jet's Pizza.

But Scheer still won’t discuss specifics, except to confirm that he has leased the space. He says that discussion of an opening date, hours and staffing would be “presumptuous” and “premature” at this point, because everything depends on LCC approval of the license transfers to the new location.

“We don’t want to be another Costco or Walmart,” he said, a reference to the lengthy and highly-publicized travails of both national retailers to obtain the necessary government approvals for local stores.

His reticence is understandable, because LCC approval may not be a gimme. In addition to its easily-mobile beer and wine license, Scheer also wants to transfer Village Corner’s license to sell higher-alcohol distilled liquor.

That’s where the kerfuffle may arise. Michigan beverage regulations prohibit multiple liquor licensees within a half-mile radius – and Northside Liquor sits just across Plymouth Road from the Courtyard Shops.

Scheer says the Courtyard Shops location qualifies for an exemption, because Plymouth Road is a four-lane road. But while the state’s regs do allow the LCC to waive distance regulations for a businesses on “a major thoroughfare of not less than 4 lanes of traffic,” nothing obligates the commission to grant an exception in any individual case.

Northside Liquor might also formally oppose the transfer, which could throw a monkey wrench into the approval process. Reached on Thursday, Northside owner Janan Zaitouna said he hadn’t received official notification of Village Corner’s application from the LCC. But he indicated that he wouldn’t be favorably disposed to see another liquor store hang out its shingle right across the street.

For his part, Scheer indicated that he would likely exercise a provision to opt out of the lease unless Village Corner can transfer its license to sell liquor, along with wine and beer.

Barring unexpected delays, the normal LCC license transfer process can take as long as two months, allowing time for paper shuffling, an on-site inspection, and sign-off by the local police department. If approved, Scheer says he would need at least four to six weeks to fixture and stock the new space before Village Corner could reopen.

But all he’s done to date is install an LCC-required burglar alarm in the still-empty space. Until the license details fall into place, he says he’s not planning further down the road.

About the author: Joel Goldberg, an Ann Arbor area resident, edits the MichWine website and tweets @MichWine. His Arbor Vinous column for The Chronicle is published on the first Saturday of the month.

Joel Goldberg

Ricky (walks in the front door): Lucy, I’m home!

Lucy (runs up and plants a smooch): Ooh, hi honey!

Ricky: Tonight we celebrate the band’s big record deal! Did you remember to buy the Cristal Champagne?

Lucy: Oh, Ricky, you’re going to be so proud of me!

Ricky: And why is that?

Lucy: Remember you told me that Cristal costs $250?

Ricky (suspiciously): Yes?

Lucy (pulls bottle from behind back): Look! I found a bottle for just $8!

Ricky (visibly upset): Lucy, that’s not Cristal. It’s not Champagne, it’s cheap Cava from Spain. See, it says “Cristalino”! That means “little crystal.”

Lucy: Oh, that’s OK. I’m just going to drink one glass.

Funny? Maybe not so much. Especially if you’re the maker of the sparkling wine formerly known as Cristalino, a Vinous Posse top value pick in the last two December budget bubbly shoot-outs.

Howcum? Back in 2006, Louis Roederer, producer of Champagne-to-the-rap-stars Cristal, found fault with the similarity in name and foil labels of the decidedly down-market Spanish Cava.

Next step: Federal court, for a lawsuit against Cristalino’s owners for trademark infringement.

Roederer’s legal eagles probably figured they couldn’t pass the smirk test with a claim that consumers would confuse the $8 and $250 bubblies. Instead, their court brief accused Cristalino of trying to hoodwink a gullible public into believing that the “inexpensive sparkling wine is the low-priced offering of the makers of the premier champagne, Cristal.”

Roederer also argued that even those who weren’t fooled might “associate the famous brand Cristal with Cristalino sparkling wine, thereby weakening the distinctiveness of the famous brand.”

(I admit to a fly-on-the-wall frisson watching French and Spanish wineries pay U.S. lawyers to duke it out for four years, with a side-trip to the Court of Appeals. Kind of like a grown-up version of the hoary schoolyard classic, “Let’s you and him fight.” Or Lisa Murkowski playing smackdown-in-the-tundra with Joe Miller and Sarah Palin.)

Over the summer Minneapolis-based federal judge Joan Ericksen finished riddling the evidence and disgorged her ruling. It left the Spaniards dripping with spray.

Relabeled Jaume Serra Cristalino, with disclaimer.

In what has to be called a name-changer, Judge Ericksen ordered Cristalino to eliminate any reference “likely to cause confusion, mistake or deception with Roederer’s Cristal marks.” The court-mandated extreme makeover included the bottle’s label colors and fonts, along with the name of the wine itself.

Now rebranded as “Jaume Serra Cristalino,” the bottle sports a new, cream-and-black label that’s currently finding its way onto Ann Arbor retail shelves as stores sell through their old stock. And at the bottom, in agate type, you’ll find a Burlington Coat Factory-style disclaimer:

JAUME SERRA CRISTALINO is not affiliated with, sponsored by, approved by, endorsed by, or in any way connected to Louis Roederer’s CRISTAL® champagne or Louis Roederer.

Is that Cristal-clear?

What’s To Drink?

If your budgetary compass points closer to Cristalino than Cristal this holiday season, then descend into the effervescent demi-monde of under-$25 sparkling wines. For our annual shoot-out, the Vinous Posse blind-tasted 16 bottles from Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, California and Michigan.

We felt tempted – but successfully resisted – inserting Four Loko as a ringer. But after its early November Michigan prohibition and subsequent reformulation sans caffeine, you may want to bookmark this eye-opening recipe (complete with instructional video and blind taste test) to concoct your own version at home. Don’t forget to buy the Jolly Ranchers.

Odd moment of the month: not swinging by South U to collect a couple of bottles from Village Corner. I can’t add much to everything that out-of-towners, long-timers, former and current University of Michigan students wrote about the store’s hiatus, except to number myself among the Ann Arbor wine-buyers who, over a period of four decades, came to see Dick Scheer and his long-tenured staff as the area’s go-to-guys (never a woman!) for a healthy pour of wine savvy along with that bottle or case.

(In the midst of the adulatory press coverage, Scheer became miffed over a misquote in December’s Ann Arbor Observer, which said he would relocate the store “sometime in 2012.” In an email sent to some of his customers, he wrote: “I have never said such to any interviewer. I intend to reopen Village Corner in a matter of weeks, not months or years.”)

Across town, VC alumnus Jorge Lopez-Chavez has already settled into new digs at the Produce Station, where he’s currently re-energizing the wine department. Once the new boss – very different from the old boss – departed earshot, Lopez-Chavez confided that he’d set all things fermented ship-shape on South State in short order.

With VC on injured reserve, this year’s roster of bubbly purveyors included the Produce Station and two wine specialists: A&L Wine Castle, along the competitive Stadium/Maple corridor, and the recently expanded (to excellent effect) Wine Seller, in Plymouth Road Mall.

We tasted and rated the wines blind, on a scale from (“Only mix with orange juice”) to (“So who needs Cristal?”). The Posse doesn’t practice grade inflation, so the mid-tier wines are worth your consideration.

For a guide to the variety of words and styles you’ll find on and inside bottles of sparkling wine, visit the December, 2008, shoot-out. Since sparkling wine styles vary greatly, also take a look at the notes along with the ratings – they’ll help you pick a bottle to suit your taste or food pairing. Unless otherwise mentioned, all have brut (that’s real dry) levels of sweetness.

Recommendations

Two bottles stood out at Posse Central: a seldom-seen German Riesling Sekt that just snuck under the price cap, and one from southern France that claims to be the world’s oldest sparkling wine.

German sparkling Riesling: Discovering Sekt's appeal.

High-quality Sekt is a Germany’s answer to Champagne – a bottle-fermented sparkler that’s not typically aged as long as in France. One great place to learn about Sekt’s appeal is from the 2008 VON BUHL Riesling Sekt b.A. Brut ($24 at Everyday Wines). Estate-grown from a 150-year-old producer, this wine is a crisp, fresh sparkler that’ll put a tingle in your mouth as it complements hors d’oeuvres and lighter dishes.

Want to pour a toast for a crowd? Try the pleasantly Champagne-like 2006 SAINT-HILAIRE Brut Blanquette de Limoux. Our sample came from Wine Seller, where it sets you back $14, but, as of Dec. 1, Costco had cases of the stuff piled in the center aisle for $10. As with most items Costco-esque, your findings may vary.

The first written record of Saint-Hilaire bubbled up in 1531, predating Champagne by more than a century. As the story goes, Benedictine monk Dom Perignon purloined the Limoux formula for sparkling wine while passing through the Languedoc en route from Spain back to his monastery in Champagne. The rest, as they say, is history. Or good marketing.

Are you a locapour? The 2008 BLACK STAR FARMS Brut Sparkling Wine, Michigan’s 2010 trophy-winner, showed competently against the global competition. Despite its in-state origin, it’s the only wine we tasted that’s unavailable to buy locally – you’ll have to order it from the winery ($22.50 plus shipping).

Also worth a mention are some picks from Decembers past: CA’ DI PIETRA Pinot Prosecco, MONTESSEL “Vigna del Paradiso” Prosecco Extra Dry, and ROEDERER ESTATE Brut, along with those relabeled Top Values from Spain, JAUME SERRA CRISTALINO Cava Brut, in both its white and rosé variants.

Ratings

VON BUHL 2008 Riesling Sekt Brut, Rheinpfalz, Germany (Everyday Wines, $24). A wine that appealed across the board. On the tart side, showing off its cool-climate growing region with a crisp but elegant higher-acid, lemon-inflected flavor profile. “Fantastic for a romantic interlude in front of the fire,” opined one Posse member.

SAINT-HILAIRE 2006 Brut Blanquette de Limoux (Wine Seller, $14; find it for sale at Costco for $10 and it’s a TOP VALUE). Nearly-consistent high scores, Champagne-like in style, a lightly toasty aroma with some yeasty notes of fresh-baked bread, a well-balanced body and pinpoint bubbles. Just slightly frothy.

DOMAINE CHANDON Rosé, California (Plum Market, $12). For years, I consigned Chandon’s California bubblies to my “second-rate” mental bin, until a recent Jon Bonné column in the San Francisco Chronicle encouraged this revisit. Pale, almost onion-skin pink, doughy/toasty aromas, gentle cherry flavor and medium-weight, though not overly complex. A hint of sweetness on the finish. Serve it with salmon.

Vinous Posse members Bill MacDonald and Sally Goldberg, tasting bad wines so you don't have to.

HENRY-DETALY Brut Champagne, France (Trader Joe’s, $19). Unsubtle but not unsatisfying – unsurprising for authentic Champagne in this price range. Big-boned and slightly sour, it’s short on fruit but compensates with healthy wallops of biscuit, yeast and toast. “In your face!” said one taster – and most others agreed.

KIRKLAND Brut Sparkling Wine, Sonoma (Costco, $11). TOP VALUE! Last year, Costco dropped the price of its authentic Champagne to $20. This year, they introduced this even-cheaper Californian. Just the thing if you like a fuller-bodied sparkler with up-front fruit, a soft, round mouthfeel, slight earthiness and gentle acidity. “Tastes like Chandon,” said one Posse member.

LIOPART Brut Rosé Cava Reserva, Spain (Produce Station, $20). Salmon-colored with bright, fresh watermelon and strawberry flavors, and a round mouthfeel. Several folks thought it was New World, not European. Good choice if you’d like to serve bubbly alongside heartier foods.

BLACK STAR FARMS 2008 Brut Sparkling Wine, Leelanau Peninsula, Michigan (Black Star Farms winery, $22.50). This one’s a cheat – you have to contact the winery to buy it. Fresh apples, slightly herbaceous and just a little off-dry. Excellent with food.

JEAN-LOUIS DENOIS Chardonnay Blanc de Blancs, France (Plum Market, $16). The go-to wine from Plum’s Rod Johnson for those who like Champagne’s style, but not price tag. Strong consensus among the tasters – three stars from everyone. Classically-styled French – some citrus, some yeast, some toast.

POULET & FILS Clairette de Die, France (Arbor Farms, $16). A blast of grapefruit and passion fruit on the nose, followed up by – lots more fruit! Enjoyably casual with lots of sweetness but little structure. Posse members let fly with descriptions: “Fruit cocktail.” “Cornucopia of candied fruit.” “Va-va-voom!” You get the picture.

CHAMPALOU Brut, Vouvray, France (Morgan & York, $22). The only wine in the tasting made from Chenin Blanc, it’s bone dry with some pine/evergreen/wintergreen notes on the pleasantly rounded palate. Short finish.

Vinous Posse member Mike Jett is serious about his work.

J.P. CHENET Blanc de Blancs, France (Whole Foods, $12). Light and fruity, with a great apple nose. Would have rated higher except for some background chemical notes to burst its bubble, reminding one taster of lemon furniture polish, another of Pine-Sol.

FERRARI Brut, Trento, Italy (A&L Wine Castle, $20). Mushrooms, toast and hazelnut abound in this bone-dry all-Chardonnay sparkler. One taster likened it to Frangelico; “We got da funk!” said another. Look elsewhere if you prefer fruit or subtlety.

DOMAINE THIBERT Cremant de Bourgogne, France (Arbor Farms, $20). Bright, light and tangy, with pear/apple aromas and an abundance of fizz. Pleasantly enjoyable, without a lot of depth.

THORNE CLARKE Brut Reserve, South Australia (Whole Foods, $16). Mid-bronze colored blend of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Slightly sour, full-bodied, and one-dimensional, several folks felt that it looked and tasted older and a little tired.

LOUISE D’ESTRÉE Sparkling Dry Red, France (Trader Joe’s, $7). I’m a sucker for sparkling reds – but even for seven bucks at TJ’s, you might do better. A simple, off-dry quaffer with deep ruby color and less-than-ripe herbal flavors. Several folks found it “cardboardy” (but not corked). Think of it as the “Beaujolais Nouveau of bubblies” and “take it out cross-country skiing.”

LABRUSCA Lambrusco Bianco, Emilia, Italy (Everyday Wines, $16). An unusual but disappointing off-dry bubbly Lambrusco that earned consistently low scores for its chemical/acetic acid aroma and flavor, along with a bitter finish.

*****    *****   *****

Quote of the Month

“Old World wines ask you to dance with them; New World wines push you prone onto a chair and give you a lap dance, no touching.” – German importer Terry Thiese, in my new-favorite wine world memoir, “Reading Between The Wines.”

About the author: Joel Goldberg, an Ann Arbor area resident, edits the MichWine website and tweets @MichWine. His Arbor Vinous column for The Chronicle is published on the first Saturday of the month.

Joel Goldberg

Although local restaurant wine markups vary widely, you might figure that wine prices in the cutthroat-competitive supermarket world would be more consistent, one to the next.

You’d figure wrong.

One fine example: Italy’s ubiquitous Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio. Fuhgedabout its modest crowd-sourced ratings; the wine’s a staple on most grocery store shelves, including seven of the eight Ann Arbor supermarkets I visited in late October.

If you’re a west-sider who shops at Plum Market, you’ll pay $17 to take home the current 2009 vintage.

Wanna spend more? No problem. On the south side, Meijer sells the same bottle for $19. Joe’s will Trade one in exchange for $21. And if buying the wine at Whole Foods makes you no healthier, its $24 price tag is likely to perk up the chain’s bottom line.

But if you really have money to burn, head east toward Hiller’s for the daily double: you’ll settle for the prior year’s vintage and they’ll soak you for $26 – a whopping $9 (53%) more than Plum’s price.

This may be an outlying example, but it’s far from atypical. The survey found prices on individual bottles can vary as much as 80% among the eight local markets, and your total tab for the identical assortment of wines will be 30% higher or lower, depending on where you shop.

Who buys wine at the supermarket? Most of us, according to the sales data. Supermarkets and their close kin – large specialty grocers like Plum and Trader Joe’s – sell one of every two bottles of the $9 billion worth of wine that America drinks annually. Many of us automatically reach for a bottle or three while we’re out foraging for vittles.

Supermarket wine sales (and “off-sales” in general) rose during the economic downturn, while restaurant sales plummeted.

Some highfalutin’ wine lovers eschew the grocery store as a refuge for overpriced generic and jug wines. To be sure, some stores still evoke the dismal supermarket wine departments of decades past. The single truncated aisle at the Carpenter Road Kroger springs to mind as the area’s worst example, with its repetitious, limited facings of labels like Barefoot and Gato Negro.

But at most places, that perception is as out-of-date as the Blue Nun Liebfraumilch that once graced the shelves. Some latter-day markets, like Whole Foods, give many wine specialists a run for the money – especially its best-in-class selection of Michigan wines.

Others consider themselves to be “a wine shop inside of a supermarket,” as Plum Market’s beverage manager Rod Johnson says; proving the point with his glassed-in temperature-controlled wine cellar featuring numerous price tags with three digits to the left of the decimal point.

The best consumer advice on avoiding supermarket schlock came – as was often the case – from recently departed Wall Street Journal wine columnists Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher. Specifically, their Vintage 2002, but still applicable piece, 10 Ways to Find a Supermarket’s Best Wines.

Among their gems to locate the best wines at the best prices: “You will be punished” at the cash register for buying big-name, familiar labels; instead, look for less-familiar bottles. (Their example of an overhyped, overpriced bottle: Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio. See why I liked those guys?)

And steer away from the best-known California brands. Better values can be found elsewhere.

With their advice in mind, during the last days of October I compiled an unscientific list of 34 wines often found in supermarkets, avoiding the temptation to let usual-suspect California top-sellers totally dominate.

Instead, I reached further afield to include two well-distributed Michigan wines (Chateau Grand Traverse Late Harvest Riesling and M. Lawrence “Sex” bubbly, from Larry Mawby) along with several from Europe and the southern hemisphere.

Obscure, geek-type wines didn’t make the cut, even though places like Arbor Farms and Plum stock some of them – after all, the only way to effectively compare prices is with widely available brands. Fortunately, supermarkets consistently stock many of the same labels, making direct price comparisons easier than last year’s survey of restaurant wines.

List in hand, I checked eight local supermarkets to find out what was on the shelf and how much it cost, then culled the list to 21 wines available at a majority of the eight stores. Where wines were on sale – and there were many, especially at the larger chains – I used the sale price that any customer would pay. Don’t forget your Kroger card, or pay full price.

(Regular readers of The Chronicle’s meeting reportage, and other obsessives, may want to view or download the full spreadsheet, which includes all 21 wines along with their availability, pricing at each store, and average prices.)

So who’s Treetown’s Bull Moose el-cheapo?

The stores fell into three categories, based on their average prices compared to other stores that stock the same wines:

Wallet-Friendly: Prices below 90% of the all-store average

• Plum Market (83%)
• Meijer (87%)

In-Between: Prices within 10% of the all-store average

• Trader Joe’s (93%)
• Busch’s (98%)
• Arbor Farms (104%)
• Whole Foods (108%)

High Markup: Prices above 110% of the all-store average

• Kroger (112%)
• Hiller’s (114%)

What does that mean in practical terms? To find out, let’s go shopping! Fill your cart with one bottle of each wine in the survey – 21 in total – and head for the cash register. Based on their current availability, you can do that at three stores, one in each price range.

At Plum Market’s checkout, your instant mini-cellar will cost $199, plus tax. Get it at Busch’s – Ann Arbor’s closest-to-average priced store – and the same collection will set you back $40 more, or $239. But if you buy the same assortment at Hiller’s, you’ll shell out $269 for the privilege – $30 more than Busch’s and $70 more than Plum.

Or flip things around: let’s budget $100 to buy wine for a holiday party. At each store’s average price, you’ll return from Meijer with ten bottles, or from Busch’s with nine. At Kroger you’ll have to go a couple of bucks over-budget to come home with eight.

Other assorted observations, in no particular order:

• Selection varies widely from store to store – and is completely independent of prices. As noted, just three stores stocked all 21 wines in the survey: the least expensive store, the most expensive store, and one smack in the middle.
• You’ll find just two of the 21 wines at every store in town: 2009 Jadot Beaujolais-Villages (at prices from $11 to $14.50) and 2008 Yellowtail Shiraz ($5.44 to $10). Seven other wines showed up at seven of the eight stores.
• In general, locally-owned stores and small chains offer a better selection of small, offbeat wines, especially from Europe. That’s probably because local folks run their wine departments, instead of central-office buyers. Of particular note in this vein: Arbor Farms and Plum.
• One exception: Whole Foods gives their local staff authority to select a lot of the wines that go on the shelf. It shows: they offer the city’s largest, most prominently-displayed selection of Michigan wines.
• Hiller’s may be the most expensive store in town, but its selection excels in the $6-to-$20 mass-market price range. They stocked a surprising 31 of 34 bottles from the original survey, and all 21 in the culled version.
• If you want to go upscale, Plum Market becomes the go-to-supermarket, with its glassed-in cellar and many main-floor selections in the $25-$50 range. Second place: Whole Foods, with a surprisingly good selection of top-shelf wines at similar prices.
• Meijer tries to fool ya, thanks to its visually imposing wooden display bins that hold some interesting bottles, mostly Californians in the $10 to $25 range. But once past those, the selection heads downhill rapidly, even if the prices are good.
• Most disappointing selections: Kroger and Trader Joe’s, each with just 10 of the 21 wines, but for different reasons. Kroger – at least the Carpenter location – offers a small department with a limited selection. Trader Joe’s sells many more wines, but most are house brands (think Three Buck Chuck) and other exclusive-to-them labels.
• The single greatest pricing disparity: Kroger was selling that 2008 Yellowtail Shiraz for $10 a bottle, while at Plum Market you could buy the same wine at two bottles for $10.88. That makes Kroger 84% more expensive than Plum.
• While cruising the aisles, I also checked vintages, expecting to find many past-their prime bottles. But except for Hiller’s – whose stock included a half-dozen one or two year-older vintages – nearly every bottle in every store was a current vintage.

The inescapable conclusion: supermarkets are clearly moving their wines quickly. Better go out and enjoy one before they run out.

About the author: Joel Goldberg, an Ann Arbor area resident, edits the MichWine website and tweets @MichWine. His Arbor Vinous column for The Chronicle is published on the first Saturday of the month.

Joel Goldberg

In the far corner, wearing synthetic trunks: Steve Heimoff, west coast editor of Wine Enthusiast magazine. I pilfered part of the column title from him; fortunately, Steve’s pretty laid back about such things.

Unlike “natural, schmatural” wine, over which he turns apoplectic: “‘Greenwashing’ is the perfect way to describe a large part of the whole natural, green, sustainable, organic, biodynamic thing. Everybody wants to portray his practices as purer than the other guy’s practices. It’s a holier-than-thou world out there, and IMHO that goes for the whole greenie-natural crowd.”

And here in the near corner, Ann Arborites Stacey and Rob DeAngelis, dressed in the all-natural cloak of DeAngelis Cantina del Vino, whose tasting room opens later this month. It’s the only winery with an Ann Arbor mailing address, though you’ll find it deep in Scio Township.

Not for them, the typical 21st century winemaker’s arsenal of chemicals, sulfites, color enhancers and designer yeasts.

What’s in the wines? “Just the grapes,” says Stacey DeAngelis, whose picture appears on their label.

She’s not kidding.

Rob and Stacey reflect a controversial paradigm shift among a small-but-vocal slice of the wine world. These “natural wine” advocates reject the winemaking techniques of the “international style” associated with the dominant critics and marketers of the last three decades.

The flagship Vinosesso, or "Sexy Wine," with Stacey DeAngelis on the label, has already sold out – before the winery's grand opening. (Photos by the writer.)

What’s the “international style”? Hypothesize a Platonic ideal of wine that lets you judge any wine, made anywhere, with a single set of universal, objective standards.

Best of all, you can plot the results on a 100-point scale.

If you accept that, it’s a short jump to conclude that winemakers carry an obligation to aspire to this ideal, using every tool at their disposal.

“Phooey!” say the naturalists. Where others see Platonic ideals, they see easy-to-drink “industrial” wines with too much ripe fruit and not enough acidity. Worst of all, they say these wines are “manipulated” or “manufactured” according to recipes and formulas to taste a specific way and earn mega-points from the critics.

Natural winemakers produce wines that embrace what their grapes naturally provide, particularly regional character and vintage variations. Their minimal-interventionist winemaking techniques mean they don’t manipulate wines to achieve specific results.

Of course, their wines also reflect any flaws in the grapes, and any mistakes that occur along the way.

If the wine industry is a three-ring circus, then natural winemaking is its high-wire act – without a net. One misstep can bring contamination from the flotsam and jetsam that reside in the ether, awaiting a tasty feast on some vulnerable grapes or wines.

For example, most modern winemakers inoculate crushed grapes with commercial yeast to jump-start fermentation and avoid unwanted microscopic critters accidentally dropping in for a munch. Winemaker Rob DeAngelis waits for the yeast that lives naturally on grape skins to slowly get to work, turning sugar into alcohol.

Most winemakers add sulfites to retard spoilage, and apply liberal blasts of inert nitrogen gas to separate the wine from damaging oxygen. Rob DeAngelis trusts his equipment and overall winery cleanliness to do the job.

And don’t get natural winemakers started about modernistic techniques like reverse osmosis or the addition of Mega Purple, a favorite bête-noir.

Nerves rubbed raw, advocates on both sides have reached a take-no-prisoners level of conversation, reminiscent of what passes for dialogue in the U.S. Congress.

Last week, critic Robert Parker, self-designated spokesman for everything the natural wine movement abhors, body-slammed those who are “saving the world from drinking good wine in the name of vinofreakism.”

Wow. Read that one again. “Vinofreakism.” That’s my kind of an insult.

But the vinofreaks know how to counterpunch the fan base’s soft underbelly. Natural wine importer Joe Dressner – popularizer of the word “spoofulated” to describe highly-manipulated wine – suggests that “the pointists and tasting notes crowd” are misguided souls who “like crappy industrial wines.”

Those would be acolytes of Parker and the Wine Spectator, if you’re keeping score.

In Michigan, Detroit wine guy Putnam Weekley (who puts in occasional Ann Arbor appearances at Everyday Wines) may be the area’s most vocal advocate for natural wine. His “Natural in Detroit” and “Detroit, the Paris of the Midwest” articles for the seriously geeky winesite Saignée have earned him a national audience, among the seriously geeky.

For the record, I’m agnostic on the subject, despite an involuntary cringe last week when I opened a Côtes du Rhône that tasted like someone had worked hard in a misguided attempt to turn it into an Australian Shiraz.

But in general, I figure a wine’s primary obligation is to pleasure the palate. Get that right, and I’ll gladly sit down with you to discuss pedigrees.

That’s why I wangled an invitation from Rob DeAngelis to drop by the nearly complete winery and tasting room, sample what he’ll have for sale later this month, and get his take on natural winemaking.

Rob DeAngelis of DeAngelis Cantina del Vino in Scio Township. He built the winery – and makes the wine.

Rob turns out to be a 50ish, long-haired raffish character in perpetual motion, proprietor of the eponymously-named heating and cooling firm with which the winery co-habits in an industrial building on Jackson Road, west of Baker.

He proudly lays claim to 30 years of experience as an amateur winemaker, following the tradition of his Italian family, but disavows ever reading a book or taking a class on the subject, or entering an amateur wine competition to see how his wines stack up.

“Zero,” he says.

Stacey, the winery’s marketer-in-chief, pounces with spousal glee. “His mother buys him books which he does not read. So she’ll go through and tag all these pages and say, ‘Read this page, read that page.’ But I know for a fact he has never touched them.”

“Nah,” Rob agrees.

But Rob DeAngelis doesn’t lack self-confidence in his coming success as a winemaker, a certitude that takes on new dimensions as we speak.

“I’ve always succeeded at everything I’ve done,” he says. “The winery is going to succeed; failure isn’t an option.”

Rob says that he personally constructed the entire winery and rustic tasting room, which includes a magnificently repurposed wooden bar and stained bamboo paneling.

A bamboo-covered bar creates a rustic ambience in the tasting room at DeAngelis Cantina del Vino.

The tasting room connects to the winery via a long, appropriately-named barrel vault.

To make the winery’s initial releases, all from vintage-2009, DeAngelis purchased grapes grown in California’s Lodi appellation through a Detroit middleman, a decision he now acknowledges got him fruit he calls “second-rate.”

This harvest, Rob and Stacey are doing things differently. They recently returned from a buying trip to California, where they visited growers and contracted to purchase ten varieties of grapes currently ripening on vines in Lodi, Napa and Sonoma. New for 2010 will be a Cabernet Franc, Petite Sirah, and Muscat.

They’re also spending twice as much per ton of grapes as they did in 2009.

“We’re going to get a better grape that I don’t have to worry about,” says Rob. “Because to make it all natural, you want to have all those nutrients inside the grape. This year’s crop is going to blow away last year’s.”

Surprisingly for a natural winemaker, his grapes aren’t organically grown. Rob is convinced that any chemical presence is long-gone by the time the grapes are picked, and his focus on grape quality trumps any concern over how they get there.

“Besides, even if you have an organic vineyard, they still spray next door and it drifts over,” he opines.

But would he consider making wine from commercially-prepared juice or kits? “No juice. Never any juice. You buy juice, you don’t know what they put in it.”

The grapes will show up at the winery in late October or early November, after a three-day voyage east in a refrigerated truck.

“We expect them to arrive right after our opening date, so we’re encouraging people to come by and see how we make wine,” Stacey says.

Small fermenters used for the first vintage. Larger versions are on the way.

Ready to receive them: a new crusher and press, and eleven still-to-arrive 1,000-gallon stainless fermentation tanks that will replace the much smaller fermenters used for last year’s trial-run vintage.

Rob won’t age the wine in oak barrels, which he says create a “better chance of getting contamination and bacteria.” Instead, he uses oak staves and bags of oak chips to impart a desired level of flavor to the wine, but ages the wines in the same easy-to-sanitize stainless tanks where they ferment.

“I’ll pressurize and steam-clean them, and I won’t have to worry about bacteria,” he says.

Rob sends his wines out for testing that confirms just three parts per million of naturally occurring sulfites, no sugar, and no yeast. The labels proudly proclaim “No Added Sulfites.”

They did an end-run around the state’s cumbersome licensing legalities by giving a new home to Ypsilanti’s orphaned Frog Island Brewing Company. That business, rechristened U Brew, already had the needed winemaking license and now appears as the winery-of-record on the DeAngelis back labels. Rob, in turn, plans to construct a microbrewery on the other side of the building for U Brew once the winery is complete.

The California buying trip yielded 80 tons of grapes. That’s enough to ferment 10,000 gallons of juice this fall, which should translate into about 4,000 cases of wine. That’s sizable production for a new, unknown Michigan winery.

Neither labeling laws nor existing Michigan practice work to their advantage. Although his 2009 grapes came from California’s Lodi viticultural area, federal law won’t let him put that geographic designation on the front label, because he made the wine in a different state. So the bottles carry only a generic “American” designation.

But that creates a Catch-22: wines without a geographic designation can’t list a vintage date on the label. Their solution: a bottleneck hanger tag identifies the vintage.

Their use of California grapes also means that Cantina del Vino gets no love – or marketing support – from the state’s Grape and Wine Council or southeast Michigan’s Pioneer Wine Trail. Neither of those organizations officially acknowledges the winery on their websites or promotional materials, nor invites them to participate in regional wine events.

So what’s a winemaker to do? For Rob and Stacey, the answer is the same as for Saline’s Spotted Dog Winery: market their own wines at events and directly to retailers.

Fortunately, the all-natural label provides them a strong selling hook; natural wine is a hot commodity in today’s marketplace; they’ve already hired two part-time salespeople in the Detroit area and placed their products in over a dozen retailers. In the Ann Arbor area, DeAngelis wines are available at A&L Wine Castle, South Main Market, and Scio Foods Party Store, as well as Ypsilanti’s Keg Party Store and Ypsilanti Food Coop. Retail prices are in the $16 range.

They just returned from pouring three wines at Detroit Uncorked. Their flagship Bordeaux blend, Vinosesso (“Sexy Wine” in Italian), went into the high-end private tasting.

Rob laughs, “They poured our wine, but they wouldn’t let us in the room to talk about it.”

Fortunately, they didn’t need the sales. Vinosesso’s small production is already sold out, as are the Chardonnay and Pinot Gris.

The winery will open with limited quantities of just four wines, all from the 2009 vintage: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Shiraz and Zinfandel.

We tasted through nearly every tank in the winery’s production area, which will initially double as their site for private tastings and receptions. Overall, the best description of what I tasted was good, but highly variable, even from tank to tank of the same wine.

That’s not unexpected from natural winemaking’s high-wire act.

One tank of Zinfandel clearly stood out, tasting of fresh, bright red raspberry fruit with some peppery notes. It’s one of the more pleasant Zins to cross my palate this year, particularly if you enjoy the grape’s lighter style.

A couple of other samples were notable for lesser reasons. One small tank of Merlot carried the distinct vinegar taint of acetobacter bacteria, possibly infiltrated from a barrel of Rob’s homemade vinegar that resided for a time just across the room.

Just as it’s unfair to critique a restaurant during opening week, it’s unwise to evaluate a winery based on its first, limited quantity releases. For now, my best guess on DeAngelis Cantina del Vino is “Incomplete.” I’d buy some of the Zinfandel tomorrow, but other wines in the lineup aren’t as ready for commercial prime time.

Rob DeAngelis flaunts the motivation, and possibly the instinctive talent, to make quality wine. Ann Arbor offers a supportive market for a business that makes artisanal, natural products. The winery provides a unique, hospitable venue for parties and events.

But how much will the wines improve across the board? Will this year’s grapes make a big difference? Will Rob adjust his winemaking techniques to avoid the mistakes and high-wire issues that can plague all-natural wines?

Like I said: Incomplete – for now.

DeAngelis Cantina del Vino is at 7879 Jackson Road, west of Baker Road in Scio Township. The winery entrance is on the side of the building, with parking in front and back. They plan to open on Oct. 14, with the official grand opening scheduled Oct. 23. Initial hours are Thursday and Friday, 1-6 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Phone: 734.564.3260.

About the author: Joel Goldberg, an Ann Arbor area resident, edits the MichWine website and tweets @MichWine. His Arbor Vinous column for The Chronicle is published on the first Saturday of the month.

Joel Goldberg

Imagine a restaurant that thrives and grows based on its friendly service, consistent products, strong marketing and support for and from its community.

But peek in the kitchen and you discover packaged mixes, pre-sliced produce, shortcut recipes and commercially-prepared dishes, straight from a central commissary or food-service supplier.

Its primarily pre-packed ingredients never spoil, but neither do they ever taste truly fresh. Menu items don’t vary from one visit to the next, thanks to consistent sourcing and preparation – but neither do they ever excite, or rise above the overall uniformity and mediocrity of their processed flavors.

Now imagine that this restaurant is, instead, a winery. And let’s consider the curious case of downtown Saline’s Spotted Dog, which just announced a capacity-tripling expansion accompanied by positive nods from some local media.

The affable John Olsen, a refugee from the world of corporate tech support, looks up from behind the tasting counter as you enter the Spotted Dog, a brick-walled, 1,600-square-foot storefront just off the corner of Michigan Avenue and Ann Arbor Street.

Olsen, who co-owns the winery with his wife, Jill, is tediously affixing labels to a batch of newly-filled bottles. Such is life at a micro-winery, where hand labor often stands in for expensive and space-consuming machines.

Cartons occupy every available cranny beneath the shelves in the store’s front half, dedicated to tasting and sales. At the rear, wine-filled glass carboys and stainless steel fermentation tanks huddle tightly in vertical ascent. That’s currently the “winery.”

There’s no need to ask why Olsen recently bought the 6,000-square-foot former Stucchi’s ice cream plant in a nearby industrial park. Once licensing formalities are complete, he’ll make wine and warehouse inventory in the temperature-controlled space, which will let the winery expand production from the current 1,000 to 3,000 cases per year.

John Olsen, co-owner of the Spotted Dog Winery in Saline.

“We need to grow to survive,” explains Olsen, matter-of-factly.

But he remains committed to the limited-volume retail storefront in Saline, where he lives and serves as president of the Saline Area Chamber of Commerce board. So he’s gone to Plan B: expand Spotted Dog’s wholesale distribution to stores and restaurants throughout the southeastern part of the state.

The attractively-labeled bottles, some of which feature the winery’s Dalmatian logo drawn by his son, are currently available at over three dozen outlets, including Arbor Farms, Hiller’s, Plum Market and Stadium Market in Ann Arbor, and the entire Busch’s chain.

Yet your first visit to Spotted Dog will surprise. You’ll scan the shelves in vain for such familiar vinous touchstones as labels or shelf tags that announce grape varieties, designations of geographic origin – or even vintages.

No, there’s not a single Chardonnay, Pinot Noir or Cabernet in sight. Instead, you’ll see rows of bottles with proprietary monikers: Spotted Dog White, Saline River Red, Tripod. Sometimes the back label lists the grapes inside, other times not.

Welcome to the Bizarro World of kit wines and wineries, where fanciful names and skillful marketing disguise what’s primarily a paint-by-numbers winemaking process

Wine kits began in Canada more than 50 years ago, so consumers could make their own wines at home, or in-store at places like the Wine Kitz chain.

Let’s just note, charitably, that early kits placed less emphasis on quality than on avoidance of the high prices and poor selection at Canada’s province-run beverage monopolies, like Ontario’s LCBO.

Canadians still dominate the industry, under multiple labels from companies like Vineco and Winexpert (both part of the Andrew Peller wine conglomerate), and R.J. Spagnols. These days, you’ll even find amateur winemaker discussion boards dedicated to making and tweaking kits from each of the major manufacturers.

The first generation of kit wineries crossed the border to Michigan a decade back, modeled after Wine Kitz. They were glad to sell you ready-to-go wine from their own stash, but these early storefront wineries, like Northville’s Vine to Wine and Howell’s Main Street Winery, primarily promoted the fun and educational experience of “make your own wine.”

Winexpert kits for "Riesling Ice Wine Style" become Spotted Dog's "Saline Ice."

Every component in a kit is pre-measured and simple to deploy, designed for the novice. Each kit starts with a sterile pail of juice or concentrate that was extracted, preserved and packaged by a processing plant in grape-growing regions around the world, destined for fermentation in Main Street storefronts across North America.

You put the juice (in the better kits) or grape concentrate plus tap water (in low-rent versions) into a carboy, along with pre-measured add-ins like yeast, powdered tannins and oak chips. Slap in a cork with an airlock, then return in four or six weeks to bottle two or three cases of wine.

A bad vintage? It doesn’t exist. And the short, simplified winemaking process never fails, as long as you sterilize everything before you start.

But U.S. consumers, more accustomed than Canadians to decent wine selections at moderate prices, proved to be tough sells on the idea of making multiple cases of the same wine. It turned out that we wanted to try a bottle of this, a half-case of that.

And needless to say, ever-impatient Americans prefer our wine today, not in six weeks.

So marketers retooled the concept. Yesterday’s make-your-own-wine storefront rebranded itself as a custom, boutique winery. Instead of customers buying multi-case kits that yield wine at $7 a bottle, proprietors now supply the requisite few minutes of work, followed by weeks of patient waiting and voila! The identical kits become winery brands – bottled, labeled and sold off the shelf for $15 the bottle.

Successful operators can get juice or concentrate for their more popular products in jumbo containers and ferment them in the larger stainless tanks used by traditional wineries. Some have totally abandoned the make-your-own segment of the business and, like Spotted Dog, merely offer custom-printed labels for customers who prefer an individualized product.

The model offers a major business advantage to owners, by freeing them from dependence on crop cycles and annual vintage variations. At any time of the year that inventory runs low, the next batch of wine – which will taste just like the previous one – is just a few weeks off.

Along the way, storefront wineries began to downplay their wines’ origins in pre-packaged kits of industrially-processed juice, preferring instead to romance the idea that customers were buying wines custom-made on site by their hometown winery.

That’s technically true, at least to the extent that one custom-makes a Betty Crocker cake. Kits aren’t faux-wine, like some nasty juice-‘n-alcohol concoction. Federal and state laws treat storefront wineries the same as any other small winery.

But the rules don’t apply to the commercially valuable “Michigan Wine Country” magazine and online guide published by the Michigan Grape and Wine Council, an arm of the state’s Department of Agriculture.

Although branding itself as “The official website of Michigan’s wine industry,” the site doesn’t allow Spotted Dog a listing.

Of about 120 licensed wineries in Michigan, only 75 meet their listing criteria, explains Linda Jones, the Grape and Wine Council’s Program Director. For inclusion, wineries need to use “a significant amount of Michigan fruit in their wines. Our target is 50%,” says Jones.

She points to Cascade Winery, near Grand Rapids, and Haslett’s Burgdorf Winery, which also started by making kit wines, as “two very good examples” of wineries that “decided to be more supportive of Michigan agriculture, and have come back and are now listed.”

Spotted Dog comes nowhere near the Council’s 50% target. Nor can it join southeast Michigan’s Pioneer Wine Trail, which includes eight area wineries that make wine from fresh fruit.

Olsen says that he doesn’t resent his winery’s exclusion from these listings, though winery customers regularly inquire why it’s not included in the Pioneer Trail guide. He says that he doesn’t reciprocate the slight: he often points visitors to other area wineries that are trail members.

And he notes that he does purchase some fresh-pressed Michigan Cabernet Sauvignon juice that he blends with wine from Merlot and Zinfandel kits to create a Spotted Dog wine called Tripod.

He also says that he often tweaks the recipes for his kits, although he’ll test any changes for acceptability to regular purchasers of a wine before making them permanent.

The new facility will also give Olsen enough room to age some wines longer than the four or six weeks their recipes call for, which he says will benefit their quality, “rather than rushing them out the door.”

Unfortunately, though kits have improved dramatically and offer a greater variety of grapes, sources and styles than in the past, they don’t ferment into products on a par with similarly-priced wines made directly from grapes and other fruit.

Their most damning characteristic remains the demolition of fresh fruit flavors and varietal characteristics caused by the processing and pasteurization of the packaged juice. Although the individual wines vary significantly in flavor, concentration and sweetness, sampling several of them quickly reveals an overall background sameness of processed flavors that overshadows many of their individual characteristics.

Here’s how to describe it: Imagine the flavor of fresh Red Haven peaches from Kapnick’s at the Farmer’s Market, and those of their canned Libby siblings, purchased at Kroger.

Now extrapolate that difference across several other types of fruit. Each canned product will have similarities to the fresh. But you’ll also detect an across-the-board sameness in the canned products that’s not present in the fresh.

That sameness comes from the processing itself, and you’ll taste the identical quality in kit wines.

That’s not to say there’s no upside. Spotted Dog wines achieve a consistency and balance that reassures many and offends few. The red wines’ tannins – added from a packet rather than extracted from the grapes – are invariably soft, fine-grained and unobtrusively integrated. Mouthfeel is round and pleasant. Acidity never jars, and fruit never overpowers.

It’s a recipe that Spotted Dog’s clientele finds appealing. “We want to make our customers happy,” says Olsen.

He points to many of his customers whose tastes have evolved during the seven years the winery has been open. “They may have started with sweet wines or fruit wines, and now they’re drinking dry reds,” he says, with obvious pride.

But if you enjoy tasting wine critically, as opposed to quaffing it as a beverage alongside dinner, you’ll invariably come away disappointed.

Is this condescending or elitist? Perhaps. But when a winery christens its regular tasting event The Monthly Slurp, it’s hard to see why others must take their wares entirely seriously, either.

Spotted Dog Winery is located at 108 E. Michigan Ave, Saline, and is open Tuesday and Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursday 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Phone 734.944.WINE (9463).

About the author: Joel Goldberg, an Ann Arbor area resident, edits the MichWine website and tweets @MichWine. His Arbor Vinous column for The Chronicle is published on the first Saturday of the month.

Editor’s note: On Sunday, Sept. 19, Joel Goldberg will be leading a tour of southeast Michigan’s wine country, with stops at Glaciers Edge Vineyard, Sandhill Crane Vineyard and Chateaux Aeronautique. Participants will meet and talk with owners and winemakers, walk the vineyards, sample their grapes and taste their wines. The day-long event costs $95 and includes transportation – departing from Ann Arbor’s Westgate Shopping Plaza – a local foods lunch and wine tastings. More details and registration information is available on the Michigan Agritours website.

Joel Goldberg

These days, lots of Ann Arbor restaurants – and even some brewpubs – are offering wine lists of reasonable quality. So why would anyone want to BYO when they eat out?

How about:

• You’re itching to try a tiny, locally-owned place – call it Jamaican Jerk Pit – whose owners can’t afford multi-thousand dollars to secure a liquor license. But you fantasize how great a cold bottle of Red Stripe might taste alongside that jerk chicken or curried goat.
• You’re feeling the economic pinch, and the wine markup at many restaurants presents a budget-busting deterrent to going out. So you eat at home, and pour a glass or two of wine. Cost: one-third of its restaurant price.
• You enjoy a restaurant’s cooking, but its wine list is particularly short and dismal. With a better beverage selection, you’d probably eat there more often.
• You squirreled away a special bottle of high-end Cabernet for a landmark birthday or anniversary. Now’s the time – and you’d like to celebrate with a meal at your favorite “special occasion” eatery, accompanied by your special occasion wine.

If any of these scenarios hits home, ponder this: though laws vary, most larger states across the country – California, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania and even Texas – allow you to legally tote along a bottle of wine when you go out to eat at a restaurant.

Here in Michigan, not so much. Except for a couple of small, largely unknown loopholes – which we’ll get to in a minute – beverage law in the GSOM (that’s Great State of Michigan) prohibits restaurant BYO.

Why ban something most other larger states allow? The short answer: because we can, thanks to the U.S. Constitution’s 21st Amendment, AKA 1933’s repeal of Prohibition. Its relevant section:

2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.

(“Intoxicating liquors” is boilerplate legalese for beverages of all types and strengths. To me, that’s both unduly pejorative and not entirely descriptive – especially when applied to lite beer.)

The wording represents ‘30s-style political compromise. To induce three-fourths of the state legislatures to ratify Prohibition’s repeal – including some whose constituents remained dubious about legalizing a popular relaxant that might provide governments with much-needed tax revenue in a period of massive deficits – each state could craft its own rules to control the substance’s sale, use and taxation.

Seventy-seven years later, the resulting patchwork of state and local beverage laws – including those that control BYO – defies rational explanation.

In both California and New York, restaurants licensed to serve alcohol can let customers bring their own beverages; unlicensed places can’t. But New York carves an exception for “businesses with fewer than 20 seats, which are permitted to offer BYO even without a license,” according to GoBYO, a highly-recommended, easy-to-use resource with a massive database of BYO-friendly restaurants, their policies, and the laws that govern them.

Texas tacks in the opposite direction; it bans BYO anyplace that’s licensed to serve all kinds of alcoholic beverages. Unlicensed restaurants, or those licensed for wine and beer only, are free to allow BYO.

Pennsylvania and Illinois pass the buck. Each municipality in those states can decide whether or not to allow BYO, and how to regulate it, if at all; default mode is wide open. One finds a free-for-all BYO city, like Chicago, next door to DuPage County, which recently had the temerity to ban BYO – but only at strip clubs (don’t ask).

Michigan law, while consistent statewide, is especially confusing. No words in the Liquor Control Code simply say, “Customers can’t bring their own alcoholic beverages into a restaurant.” Instead, several different sections touch obliquely on BYO.

This paragraph, from Section 436.1901, covers places that already serve alcohol:

(5) A retail licensee shall not, on his or her licensed premises, sell, offer for sale, accept, furnish, possess, or allow the consumption of alcoholic liquor that has not been purchased by the retail licensee from the commission or from a licensee of the commission authorized to sell that alcoholic liquor to a retail licensee.

A restaurant (or bar) breaks the law if it lets customers consume any beverage it didn’t acquire through a state-sanctioned distributor. There’s a lot on the line for a place caught in violation; the Michigan Liquor Control Commission (MLCC), which polices its licensees, can impose fines and suspend or even yank a liquor license for repeat offenses.

But one significant loophole exists; it’s called “hotel.” Section 436.2021 exempts licensed “resort area” hotels from those pesky consume/possess prohibitions:

(4) This act and rules promulgated under this act do not prevent a class A or B hotel designed to attract and accommodate tourists and visitors in a resort area from allowing its invitees or guests to possess or consume, or both, on or about its premises, alcoholic liquor purchased by the invitee or guest from an off-premises retailer, and does not prevent a guest or invitee from entering and exiting the licensed premises with alcoholic liquor purchased from an off-premises retailer.

Nowhere does the Liquor Control Code define “resort area,” leaving it subject to individual interpretation. The hotel industry clearly had a good Lansing lobbyist when the law was passed.

Surprisingly, none of the locally-owned hotels that I contacted knew about this provision.

Steve Kasle, proprietor of Mercy’s at the Bell Tower, replied with a quick “it’s illegal” when asked about BYO. When informed that his hotel-owned liquor license might provide the opportunity to allow BYO, Kasle said he would check into it, and “might consider it” in the future, on a case-by-case basis.

Around the corner, at the Campus Inn, executive chef/food and beverage director Dan Tesin confirmed that he quietly accommodates the occasional BYO request, without charging a corkage fee – even though he was unaware of the legalities.

“It’s never been an issue; our restaurant is basically for hotel guests who are in town at the University of Michigan or on business, and they don’t typically bring wine,” Tesin said.

There’s no mention of BYO on the Victors Restaurant menu, and Tesin estimates that less than 1% of his customers ask about it.

At Weber’s Inn, probably Ann Arbor’s busiest hotel restaurant and recipient of a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence, restaurant manager Rob Massau makes no bones about the BYO policy: “We try to discourage it.”

“We do not allow BYO on wines that we carry,” said Massau. “Our wine prices are extremely reasonable.”

Weber’s lets other wines into the restaurant for a $10 corkage, though that isn’t publicized, Massau said. “Absolutely no alcohol” can be brought in for banquets or other private events.

But further afield, one savvy restaurant guy takes full advantage of the law to boost his hotel’s food business.

The Townsend Hotel’s Rugby Grille, another Wine Spectator award winner in the heart of downtown Birmingham’s “resort area,” has displayed a hefty $25 corkage fee on the bottom of its dinner menu for the past year and a half.

Keith Schofield, its smooth-spoken, wine-loving general manager, developed a strategy to turn BYO into a profitable, relationship-building enterprise. He explains the policy as an accommodation for his upscale clientele.

“Many of them have pretty amazing cellars,” said Schofield. “It started out as, ‘I’ve got this special bottle; can I bring it in to have with dinner?’ I started getting more and more requests, and they were things that we didn’t have on the list, so we decided it would be the right thing to allow it.”

Economics also played a role. “It’s a recognition of where the economy was,” said Schofield. “I’d rather have you come in and have dinner in my restaurant, and have a cocktail, and I’ll open your bottle of wine for a corkage charge. Enjoy yourself!”

The savvy Schofield did his legal research before adopting the policy. “You don’t want to mess with the MLCC. The liquor license is much too valuable.”

BYO Welcome: The Rugby Grille in Birmingham's Townsend Hotel will open and pour your bottle – for a price. (Links to larger image)

That’s how he ran into the hotel BYO provision.

“The breadth of the hotel license allows us to do it here, whereas a freestanding restaurant may not have it,” he explained. “The guy across the street – he can’t offer it.”

“I talked with one of the MLCC legal people. I said, ‘This is where I’m from, this is what I’m proposing to do. Can I legally do it?’ And he said, ‘Yes, you can, according to my understanding of the law.’ And I said, ‘Thank you very much.’”

Schofield says that customers who bring their own wine tend to be collectors who don’t take undue advantage of the policy. “They’re typically bringing in very nice bottles of wine, and they’ll typically also buy a bottle off the list.”

But even where it’s legal and publicly advertised, BYO represents a blip compared to the restaurant’s total sales. Schofield confirms that “around 5%” of his customers currently bring in their own wines.

He remains publicly “neutral” on whether the policy has been profitable for the restaurant, but he does say that “business is good” and his BYO customers “typically dine well and spend more.”

Plus there’s a personal perk: customers often pour a taste for their server or Schofield. “I’ve tasted some amazing wines as a result,” he said.

When it comes to unlicensed restaurants, the wording is clear. It’s spelled out in Section 436.1913:

(2) A person shall not consume alcoholic liquor in a commercial establishment selling food if the commercial establishment is not licensed under this act. A person owning, operating, or leasing a commercial establishment selling food which is not licensed under this act shall not allow the consumption of alcoholic liquor on its premises.

But this isn’t just about restaurants. No establishment – of any type – may accept “consideration” for allowing BYO:

(1) A person shall not do either of the following:

(a) Maintain, operate, or lease, or otherwise furnish to any person, any premises or place that is not licensed under this act within which the other person may engage in the drinking of alcoholic liquor for consideration.

(b) Obtain by way of lease or rental agreement, and furnish or provide to any other person, any premises or place that is not licensed under this act within which any other person may engage in the drinking of alcoholic liquor for consideration.

For the final touch: the word “consideration” doesn’t mean what you think it does. It’s not just the corkage fee you might be charged by an unlicensed restaurant. It’s any money that you pay to anyone for anything:

(5) As used in this section, “consideration” includes any fee, cover charge, ticket purchase, the storage of alcoholic liquor, the sale of food, ice, mixers, or other liquids used with alcoholic liquor drinks, or the purchasing of any service or item, or combination of service and item; or includes the furnishing of glassware or other containers for use in the consumption of alcoholic liquor in conjunction with the sale of food.

Note the words “any service or item.” Those are the words that prevent Michigan salons or spas from legally pouring you a glass of wine while you luxuriate in their care.

Once more, you have a loophole: guests at events in unlicensed venues, like a rental hall or someone’s barn, don’t pay “consideration” to attend – unless you count the wedding gift you brought. So nothing prevents the hosts from providing alcohol for their guests to consume, as long as the venue’s owners don’t mind.

In 2007, the MLCC confirmed this loophole in writing, saying they “received numerous inquiries regarding the legality of non-licensed businesses allowing consumers to consume alcoholic beverages in their establishments.” A rare MLCC public statement that reaffirmed the illegality of BYO for “consideration” also stated:

This law would not prohibit a wedding reception, retirement party, open house, or other similar event that is held in a non-licensed facility whereby the attendees were guests and were not charged any fee whatsoever.

Enjoy the wedding!

And if, by some chance, you know an establishment – licensed or unlicensed – that doesn’t always observe the letter of the law when it comes to BYO, please keep it to yourself, or among a few trustworthy friends. Do NOT post it on Yelp.

Your fellow wine lovers thank you.

Michigan Wine Competition: The Stars Shone Black

On Tuesday, Aug. 3, I joined fellow Ann Arborites Christopher Cook, David Creighton and Dick Scheer – plus 21 other assorted winemakers, Master Sommeliers, merchants and journalists – to judge the 33rd annual Michigan Wine Competition, at East Lansing’s Kellogg Center. In a sign of Michigan wines’ growing national reputation, a record 10 out-of-staters judged this year, including winemakers from New York and California.

Assistant winemaker Joe Ohanesian, left, and Winemaker Lee Lutes brandish the Black Star Farms trophy trio.

But we could have just stayed home and dictated a laudatory press release about Black Star Farms.

The Leelanau Peninsula winery and satellite facility on Old Mission Peninsula won three of eight “Best of Class” trophies, and seven gold and double gold medals.

While the number of gold medals remained steady, the total medal count dropped from 267 (67% of entries) last year to 220 (55%) this year.

In part, chalk that up to Michigan’s less-than-stellar 2008 and under-ripe 2009 vintages, whose wines are garnering fewer hosannas than the 2007’s that preceded them. But equal credit goes to Competition Superintendent Chris Cook, who exhorted judges to mint fewer medals, especially in the lowest bronze tier, in order to boost the competition’s reputation.

Here’s the rundown of trophy winners by category:

• SPARKLING: 2008 Black Star Farms Sparkling Wine
• DRY WHITE: 2009 Black Star Farms Arcturos Pinot Gris
• SEMI-DRY WHITE: 2009 Black Star Farms Arcturos Riesling
• ROSÉ: 2009 45 North Blanc de Pinot Noir (2nd consecutive vintage winner)
• DRY RED: 2007 Bowers Harbor “Erica Vineyard” Cabernet Franc
• SEMI-DRY RED: NV Lawton Ridge “AZO” (Chancellor/Chambourcin)
• DESSERT: 2008 “42″ Ice Wine, Fenn Valley (2nd year winner for the same wine)
• FRUIT: Uncle John’s Franc-N-Cherry (Cabernet Franc and Cherry blend)
• JUDGES MERIT AWARD: 2009 Chateau Fontaine Woodland White (Auxerrois)

You can read, download or print the full list of medal winners here.

About the author: Joel Goldberg, an Ann Arbor area resident, edits the MichWine website and tweets @MichWine. His Arbor Vinous column for The Chronicle is published on the first Saturday of the month.

Joel Goldberg

For a brand-new Michigan winery that’s only put out one wine – under someone else’s license, no less – Old Shore Vineyards is getting a lot of buzz.

Vinology owner Jon Jonna made first contact during the crush of WineFest’s Wine Crawl.

“You need to taste this Pinot Gris,” he said, pouring liquid into my glass from the bottle he was clutching.

He was right. Despite sub-optimal tasting conditions, the wine impressed.

A couple of weeks passed. Wyncroft Winery owner Jim Lester blew through town for last month’s Chronicle rosé tasting. “Did you hear about Old Shore?” he asked. “And did you know that Dannielle is from Ann Arbor?”

No, I didn’t.

Then a Tweet fluttered by from Andrew Gorsuch, The Produce Station’s wine loving general manager. His follow-up email raved that the 2008 Pinot Noir (a test run, not available to buy) flaunted “an amazing balance of fruit and tannins … Although it was not for retail sales, it gave me a preview of what is to come …”

OK, time to find out what all the excitement’s about.

Let’s start with the bottom line: that single Old Shore wine – a 2009 Pinot Gris from the southwest’s Lake Michigan Shore – is a thing of beauty salvaged from a seriously deficient vintage.

Ripe tropical fruits, tangerine and a touch of honey combine with a luscious, round mouthfeel and just enough acidity to remind you that the wine indeed hails from Michigan. Uncorking a bottle for a group of wine lovers brings a series of double-takes, followed closely by a chorus of “Let me see that bottle.”

Wise choice, to look at the label. Buried in the small print on the back lies a surprising pedigree. The grapes were trucked 300 miles north, where they became wine at 2 Lads Winery, under the skillful hand of Cornel Olivier, one of the state’s elite winemakers. More on that later.

(You’ll find it locally on the wine list at West End Grill along with Vinology, where it’s also available to take out. Or get it from the winery, where it retails for $18. But don’t dawdle; they only made 93 cases, and just 25 or so remain.)

WTF??? All that buzz over just 93 cases of an $18 wine? The scales fall. Some marketing guru must lurk behind the scenes, pulling strings.

Dannielle Maki: "Targeting an audience who are genuine fine wine lovers." (Photos by the writer.)

Meet Dannielle Maki, a 20-year Ann Arbor resident who, until she left last year to develop the Old Shore brand, headed advertising for locally-based Avfuel, a nationwide supplier of airplane fuel and ancillary products.

For several months, she’s been quietly building a social media following on Facebook and, more recently, Twitter, as well as marketing her wines to a few selected restaurants in Ann Arbor, Chicago and the Lake Michigan Shore region.

“We’re targeting an audience who are genuine fine wine lovers,” Dannielle says.

They’re also taking a page from the marketing playbook of some of the more successful boutiques in Napa Valley and France’s Pomerol: nothing attracts genuine fine wine lovers more than the notion of getting their hands on a scarce bottle. Like 93 cases worth of scarce.

“To have something that’s limited quantity and premium quality – you want to make sure you get some,” she says.

Scarcity “ideally lets you push the price a little bit more, too,” observes David, her husband.

To both of them, using scarcity as a marketing tool leads to important decisions about retail distribution.

“We’re in-between that whole mantra of ‘Do you want the wine to be too accessible? Do you want to be able to go to The Produce Station and pick up a bottle?’” says David.

David Maki also comes with an Ann Arbor connection: He earned an MBA at the University of Michigan in 1988 before moving on to a career with Deutsche Bank in Chicago, for whom he still works in real estate finance.

They married last year, after several years as a couple. The result? They commute among three homes: David’s place in Chicago’s River North. Dannielle’s over-the-coffee-bar loft on Main and Liberty in Ann Arbor, where she spends “three days out of seven.”

And the white clapboard farmhouse atop a rolling hill in Buchanan, Michigan, where the three of us, along with Sofia, the winery’s Labradoodle, are splayed on the porch, trying to stay cool.

Apart from a dearth of mature landscaping, you might suppose that the house had settled harmoniously into these surrounds nearly a century ago. Not so. David, whose undergraduate training was as an architect, designed and built it in 2006, on 65 acres of vacant farmland he’d bought the previous year.

The in-ground pool beckons bluely on this steamy late spring afternoon. Rows of grapevines, verdant with early season growth, run downslope from the house to complete the tableau.

Dannielle Maki with the winery's Labradoodle, Sofia.

Life can be good here in southwest Michigan wine country, down the street from Hickory Creek Winery, around the corner from Tabor Hill, and seven miles from the shore of Lake Michigan.

And guess what? Dannielle and David would like to share it with you. Their audacious business plan: to create an upscale Michigan boutique winery with a whiff of exclusivity, market it through social networking, encourage customers to partake in its lifestyle and seasonal events and, not incidentally, develop a demand-driven market for its premium-quality wines.

Everything flows from a single, simple premise: “People love to be in vineyards, they’re happy when they’re in vineyards,” says David.

“It’s what we see as the experience,” says Dannielle.

“Marketing is not just the package and product. It’s the experience,” says David.

As we explore elements of their shared passion for the winery, the excitement level rises on the porch. They begin to tag-team each other’s thoughts and sentences. Frequently.

Old Shore will be a place “where you can host events, where you can merge the social aspects of wine that everyone enjoys with a facility that lets you do that,” explains David.

Consistent with this vision, the winery, due to start construction later this year and open in the spring of 2011, won’t resemble the production facilities and open-seven-days tasting rooms typical of most wineries. Winemaking at the facility will play second-fiddle to tastings and event hosting.

And Old Shore’s tasting room will only be accessible by prior appointment.

“Our concept is to go on a little different tack, to stick with something that’s a little more private in its orientation,” says David. “You’re not waiting for someone to drive up, you’re preparing for someone to come in. You’re giving them a much more focused experience.”.

“There’s something missing with most tasting facilities,” continues Dannielle. “We’ll have a 16- or 20-foot farm table. You’re sitting down and chatting, and the wine is flowing and there’s appetizers to go with the wine, and it’s an experience at Old Shore, and afterward maybe you buy some wine.”

Activities will move outdoors when weather cooperates.

“We envision doing yoga in the vineyard,” says Dannielle. “We have 16 to 25 people come in, they do yoga in the vineyard for 90 minutes with a yogi from Chicago in the middle of a vineyard break, then you come and have a picnic in another vineyard break, with a healthy salad. And you walk away with a bottle of wine.”

Dannielle and David Maki at the Old Shore Vineyard. Of tasting in the vineyard, Dannielle Maki says: "It's a lifestyle approach."

“It’s a lifestyle approach – people who love wine, love food, love travel – it’s engaging them on so many levels. We have 20 people already signed up to come to harvest and help pick grapes. Those are things we can do for our customers who truly want to come and experience things.”

This approach might seem obvious in Napa, where many small wineries thrive with private tasting rooms, upscale events, and sales primarily targeted to mailing list customers.

But Michigan wine struggles with its image, a problem both Makis want to correct.

“We – Michigan winegrowers – have vineyards that look just as amazing as they do in California, settings that are beautiful. It’s just the right way to showcase what you can do, put it in a package that feels upscale,” says Dannielle.

Their six acres of vineyard – planted in 2006 and split evenly between Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir – does look pretty spiffy this time of year. To David, they represent a natural extension of his decision to build a “getaway home” in southwest Michigan.

Young Pinot Gris grapes, from the upcoming 2010 harvest.

“The home was designed to be in the context of the farms around it. To me, the concept made sense: I’m going to be in wine country, so I might as well put grapes in.”

They made one smart decision: hiring neighbor Mike DeSchaaf, the quality-oriented co-owner of Hickory Creek and operator of a vineyard management service, to plant and maintain the vineyard.

“Michael thinks we got the cream of the crop as far as the vineyard site here,” says David.

DeSchaaf supervised selection of individual grape clones and planted the vines at a closer-than-normal four-foot spacing, with the goal of decreasing each vine’s yield to improve the quality of its grapes.

DeSchaaf has another incentive to take good care of the Makis’ vines: he buys their surplus grapes to use in Hickory Creek’s wines. That’s right; the 93 scarce cases of Pinot Gris represent only a small portion of their grapes.

They’ve already mapped out eight additional acres to plant, and will start next year. They’ll be planting mostly Cabernet Franc and Chardonnay in the next batch, because those grapes do well in the area.

Plus a small patch of Cabernet Sauvignon, which “is going to have its challenges,” observes David.

The second vineyard section has been a source of contention between Dannielle and David, who says dryly, “I tend to be a little more immediate gratification.”

Indeed. A couple of years back, he actually ordered and paid for 8,000 vines to plant on the additional acres. “I’m used to making quick decisions. You place the order, then you move on.”

David Maki: "Do you want the wine too accessible?"

That didn’t set well with Danielle, who pointed out that David was “doubling down” when they hadn’t yet made any wine from their existing grapes, and didn’t even have a winemaker lined up. “We don’t even know what our product is yet! We didn’t know what these grapes would produce.”

After adding up the costs of posts, wire and labor to plant vines and construct the trellises, they decided to delay. Fortunately, DeSchaaf was able to sell the suddenly-orphaned vines to other growers in the area.

This time around, they’re feeling more comfortable. In large part, that’s because they’ve got one of Michigan’s top winemakers on board.

Cornel Olivier seems like an odd choice to make wine for Old Shore, considering that 2 Lads lies five hours away, on Old Mission Peninsula. He’s also never made wine from Lake Michigan Shore grapes, and never made wine for another winery since starting his own. Selecting him also caused some sotto voce grumbles among the Makis’ neighbor winemakers, who felt they were up to the task of making Old Shore’s wines.

But for David and Dannielle, it was love at first taste. While touring wineries in the Traverse City area in 2008, they stopped in at 2 Lads and met Olivier and the other lad – his winery partner, Chris Baldyga – a meeting they call “serendipitous.”

“We found another group of people in Michigan that have the same philosophy, the same core values,” says Dannielle.

They fling adjectives about to describe Olivier. “Brilliant man. Amazing chemist. Passionate about wine and everything wine.”

Although their new facility will have the ability to make “some” wine on the premises, the bulk will still be done at 2 Lads, according to the Makis.

“It won’t change our relationship with Cornel,” says David.

“It’s working smoothly, so why change something?” asks Dannielle.

Olivier concurs. “If the weather cooperates, they can do well.”

Part of the weather concerns in southern Michigan vineyards include worrying about botrytis, a grape-eating fungus that isn’t usually a problem up north but is endemic in the south, with its higher humidity and more frequent showers.

“It’s a challenge with late rains,” Olivier says. Both of Old Shore’s 2009 grapes suffered from some botrytis infection.

Label from the upcoming Pinot Noir: an August date with the bottling machine for 100 scarce cases.

The 2009 Pinot Noir is currently resting in a tank at 2 Lads, after a restrained seven months in second-fill French oak barrels. Approximately 100 cases have an August date with the bottling machine, for release later in the year.

“The color isn’t as deep as the 2008,” he says, referring to Old Shore’s non-commercial trial run. “And it’s a little softer.”

David and Dannielle credit Olivier with much of the success of their 2009 crop, saying that he told them not to panic when botrytis set in.

“Around here, everyone picked two or three weeks before we did. Everyone saw grapes breaking down and panicked. Cornel held our hand; he kept saying, ‘Wait, wait.’ That’s a very big key.”

The results are in the numbers and the wines’ taste; while other wineries from their area harvested many less-than-ripe grapes in 2009, Old Shore got brix levels of 23 in their Pinot Gris, 24 in the Pinot Noir.

As with many of their other choices, Dannielle and David eschew the conventional route to marketing their wines.

Southwest Michigan’s smaller wineries traditionally face toward Chicago, just 90 minutes away, displaying a different part of their anatomy to the Ann Arbor and Detroit markets.

Roses at the end of the rows don't really serve any function – but they add a nice touch.

But, in addition to Chicago, Dannielle is working her local contacts, hoping to establish a strong beachhead for Old Shore in the Ann Arbor area.

“We hope to share our area with Ann Arbor, hope that more people come out to Lake Michigan Shore,” she says.

They’re also uncertain about retail distribution – in part because they’re concerned with the stigma that lingers from a time when Michigan “came in as a price point wine,” says Dannielle.

She notes pointedly that the wine list at West End Grill – not a restaurant noted for its past friendliness to Michigan wines – doesn’t mention where Old Shore Pinot Gris comes from, but simply lists it among the other whites.

“Our mission is not to compare ourselves to other Michigan wineries. Let’s compare the varietal – a Pinot Gris from Michigan, Oregon or Alsace,” says Dannielle.

David concurs, saying they would sell it at “a place where it’s not under a ‘Michigan’ sign. I would sell it at a place like Plum if they’d put it with all the Pinot Gris. I don’t want it with the Michigan wines.”

Follow-up: The Talented Mr. Rodenstock

Remember Hardy Rodenstock, the German wine impresario fingered for peddling counterfeit Thomas Jefferson bottles and other high end collectibles, as Chronicled in April’s Arbor Vinous?

Last month l’affaire Rodenstock took a bizarre turn. Mike Steinberger reported in Slate that a pair of large-living, see-no-evil New York wine merchants served as Rodenstock’s U.S. conduit for hundreds of elderly bottles of suspect provenance.

But more significantly, the pair also played matchmaker between Rodenstock and wine critic Robert Parker.

Parker subsequently planted a big wet kiss on Rodenstock’s already suspect integrity, writing in the Wine Advocate in 1996 that they tasted together “several times” in 1994 and 1995, and that any “unkind remarks I had read about him were untrue. A man of extraordinary charm and graciousness, Rodenstock is a true wine lover in the greatest sense of the word…”

While not implicated in the fraud, Parker may have unwittingly facilitated its execution when he awarded 100 points to one of Rodenstock’s rarities – a magnum of 1921 Château Petrus. Soon after Parker’s accolade, additional magnums began to appear on the collectibles market in suspiciously large quantities.

Parker (recently deposed) and his tasting notes on Rodenstock’s wines (recently subpoenaed) have now emerged front-and-center in the scandal and attendant litigation.

I remember reading Parker’s paean to Rodenstock in 1996 and thinking, with a twinge of jealousy, how tasters of their rank do indeed drink differently from you and me. But now, with benefit of hindsight, Parker appears surprisingly credulous, even tone-deaf in failing to perceive how his prodigious palate and stature might be hijacked to serve the commercial – not to say nefarious – schemes of others.

Wine lovers who believe that only bankers and politicians engage in high-level footsie to the detriment of the pigeon class should take 15 minutes to read Steinberger’s piece in Slate. It’s first-rate investigative journalism of a sort seldom seen in the trade-supported wine glossies.

About the author: Joel Goldberg, an Ann Arbor area resident, edits the MichWine website and tweets @MichWine. His Arbor Vinous column for The Chronicle is published on the first Saturday of the month.

Jan Longone, giving remarks at a June 8 reception: "Culinary history is a subject worth studying and fighting for." (Photos by the writer.)

At a June 8 reception at the Hatcher Graduate Library in front of more than 200 guests, UM provost Teresa Sullivan accepted the donation on behalf of the university, saying that the Longone collection turned UM into a “national leader” in this “emerging field of scholarship.”

Sullivan noted that the archive extends far beyond collections of recipes, and provides valuable insights in such areas as the study of gender roles, regionalism, health, diet and cultural identity.

The Clements Library will house the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive, as the collection is formally known. Kevin Graffagnino, the library’s director, said that the “groundbreaking donation … vaulted the Clements into the forefront of culinary history.”

In remarks during the June 8 reception, Jan Longone said she had long believed the new field “was a subject worth studying and fighting for.” She is also curator of American Culinary History at the Clements.

In 2007, the New York Times called Jan Longone “the top expert on old American cookbooks.” For decades, she has operated the Food and Wine Library from her westside Ann Arbor home, purchasing and supplying ephemera of culinary history to international collectors and culinary luminaries.

Chemistry Professor Emeritus Dan Longone, whose specialty is wine history, also donated numerous items from his collection to the archive.

The Hatcher’s Audubon Room will display four documents from the archive through June 28.

Dan and Jan Longone, by the some of their collection's rarest books.

One of those items, Malinda Russell’s 39-page “Domestic Cook Book,” is the only known copy of the first cookbook written by an African-American, published in 1866 in Paw Paw, Michigan. The Longones’ sleuthing to track down its author and background was the subject of the 2007 Times article.

Also on exhibit is “Tractatus de Vinea,” published in 1629, which the Longones describe as “the most significant 17th century book on wine,” covering topics from grape-growing and vinification to commercial and legal considerations surrounding wine.

About the author: Joel Goldberg, an Ann Arbor area resident, is editor of the MichWine website. His Arbor Vinous column for The Chronicle is published on the first Saturday of the month.

Joel Goldberg

Don’t point the finger of blame at Hieftje, Lesko or even RichRod for this one. In-the-know locals assign responsibility where it clearly belongs.

It’s all White Zinfandel’s fault.

Last week, San Francisco Chronicle wine columnist Jon Bonné penned a sentence I wish I’d written to describe a peculiar phenomenon: “The more people drink rosé, the more mediocre rosé appears.”

During the 1980s, the national craze for mediocre-by-design White Zin so came to define rosé that no “serious” wine drinker wanted to be seen sipping something pink from a glass.

It’s taken the market for high-quality rosé nearly a full generation to recover from the hangover.

This phenomenon isn’t limited to rosé. Several years previously, a tidal wave of insipid German Liebfraümilch washed up on our shores to commit long-term mayhem on the demand for Riesling. More recently, the Merlot boom reached a precipitous end the instant its inherent mediocrity was declaimed by no less an authority than Myles in the movie “Sideways.”

Rosé’s recent comeback was long overdue, in large part because it’s the perfect warm weather wine. Fans of classic rosé prize its fresh fruit aromas and flavors, balanced by crisp acidity and, on occasion, a hint of sweetness.

A flight of rosé consists of many colors.

It also pairs well with summer foods from the grill, at a season when big, high-alcohol reds seem less appealing. Rosé is heartier and more flavorful than white wine; just as chilling but not as filling as beer.

Rosé lovers associate these characteristics with regions that don’t traditionally over-ripen grapes or manufacture wines with palate-numbing alcohol levels – primarily France and Spain. It’s not coincidence that no Ann Arbor retailer suggested a single California or Australia rosé to include in this month’s tasting.

As a fruit-driven wine, the normal rule for rosé-buying is, “The younger and fresher, the better.” You’re nearly always best-off with the most recent vintage – currently, 2009 – and should regard with extreme suspicion bottles more than two years old.

Multiple roads lead to rosé. But they begin with a single fact of grape physiology: except for a few oddball varieties (like the hybrid Alicante Bouschet) the juice inside almost every classic red grape is nearly colorless.

Go ahead and stomp on some Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir or Syrah. They’ll bleed clear.

We get red wine by crunching red grapes and leaving the fermenting juice to make nice with all those red skins in a tank or barrel. Color leaches into the juice as they soak together; so do the tannins and other flavor components. Leave ‘em together long enough and the embryonic wine turns red.

Now think of classic rosé – also known as direct-to-press – as red wine lite. Give the juice and skins a chance to canoodle for a few hours to a few days, then press the skins before too much color and tannins are extracted. Voilà! You’ve got rosé – or at least you will once the fermentation stops.

Winemakers who use this method can choose the optimal moment to pick grapes dedicated to rosé, typically before they ripen as much as the same varietals destined for red wine. These less-ripe grapes yield wines with lower alcohol, more acidity and lighter, fresher fruit flavors than fully ripe grapes from the same varietals – an optimal recipe for quality rosé.

The second approach involves what the French call saignée (say: Sayn Yay!) – but we’ll stick to its less elegant Yank translation, “bleed-off.” Instead of pressing the skins after a short soak, the winemaker opens a valve to let some of the juice bleed off the skins. Both batches continue their fermenting ways, one with and one without additional skin contact.

This double-barrel strategy lets winemakers turn a single batch of  grapes into two wines. The bleed-off goes into the bottle as rosé, while the red wine remains in the tank and gets a color and tannin pick-me-up from its super-sized skin-to-juice ratio.

Wyncroft Winery's Jim Lester takes a sniff; Vinous Posse member Clay Johnson takes notes.

Think of it as blood-doping for red wine.

The downside is that bleed-off requires a built-in compromise. Winemakers who bleed off in order to improve less-than-optimally ripe grapes will get some additional concentration in the red wine, but they’ll still face an unripe flavor profile. Or if they use grapes that have reached full ripeness, the bleed-off juice carries less acidity and a full wallop of alcohol – not exactly a desirable recipe for the best quality rosé.

But if purists find bleed-off rosé slightly unsavory, they go livid over the third (and cheapest) route to make pink wine: blending white and red wines together to create ersatz rosé. Essentially, it’s white wine with color added from a tiny percentage of red.

Last year, this internal spat turned into a highly public political free-for-all, as old-school European rosé producers – led by France – fought and successfully defeated a European Union proposal to let EU winemakers produce rosé this less expensive way, in order to compete more successfully in export markets.

Boycotts were threatened. Individual EU countries vowed not to allow such wines to cross their borders. On more than one occasion, the word “sacrilege” came into play.

Of course, while the debate ran its course, our French friends conveniently overlooked an exception already in place for one of their own famous exports: Rosé Champagne, which marries Chardonnay and  Pinot Noir in just the manner they found so objectionable.

Oops.

What’s to Drink?

The Vinous Posse corralled 18 rosés, half from France and the rest a hodge-podge of origins: Spain, Italy, South Africa, and Chile. With one exception, all came from the 2009 vintage. Many are available at multiple places around town; the stores and prices listed indicate the source of our samples.

Jim Lester, owner/winemaker of southwest Michigan’s tiny, high-end Wyncroft Winery, sat in with the Posse for this month’s tasting. “My mouth is just ringing with rosé,” he was heard to mutter at the end of the evening.

With some trepidation over the less-than-ripe 2009 vintage, we included two Michigan rosés you won’t find on local shelves. Old Mission Peninsula’s 2 Lads, whose website calls last year “the most challenging growing season in Michigan history,” makes a top-notch but idiosyncratic Cabernet Franc Rosé that’s only available from the winery.

Tabor Hill’s well-priced Cab Franc Rosé frequently finds its way to my dinner table alongside summer fare. We cadged a bottle of the just-released 2009 from the winery; it will show up on local shelves once stocks of the currently-available 2008 are exhausted.

Though the price tag squeezed our tasting budget until it screamed “Ouch!” we included a bottle many wine lovers consider the peak of the rosé-maker’s craft, Domaine Tempier from France’s Bandol region, just off the Mediterranean coast. At $37 – nearly double the next-highest priced wine – I had to wonder: would the Vinous Posse deem it worth the money?

We tasted all wines blind and rated them on a scale from (White Zin be better) to (Forget summer – we’d drink this anytime). Only small differences separate each category, wine styles vary widely, and tasters often disagree (sometimes vocally) over the bottles. So check the notes along with the ratings to pinpoint styles, grapes and regions that match your palate.

Top rosé: Chateau de Lancyre, the "after" picture.

Recommendations

Bragging rights go to the Syrah and Grenache-based CHATEAU DE LANCYRE from Pic Saint-Loup in southern France, which flaunts the balance of vibrant fresh fruit and acidity that defines top-drawer rosé. It’s available at several local stores, priced in the upper teens, and just nosed out the spendier and more elegant DOMAINE TEMPIER, another group favorite, for top score.

If you, like most people, treat rosé as a summer sipper rather than wine for contemplation, three good values stand out in the $6 to $12 range. South Africa’s MULDERBOSCH CABERNET SAUVIGNON earned consistently high scores among all the tasters, who enjoyed its juicy, watermelon character.

Michigan-grown TABOR HILL CABERNET FRANC makes a good choice for those who prefer their rosé on the light, crisp side, with a hint of sweetness. And the least expensive wine tasted, the mass-produced and widely available LA VIEILLE FERME, also from southern France, shows less fruit than many of its peers, but merits consideration at $6 or $7 as a pleasant, refreshing quaff.

Ratings

2009 CHATEAU DE LANCYRE, Pic Saint-Loup, France (Arbor Farms, $19). 50% Syrah, 40% Grenache, 10% Cinsault. Touches all the right notes for a big-boned southern French rosé – rich floral nose, ripe, bright fruit flavors and reasonable acidity. “A ballerina of a wine in pink tulle!” enthused one imagery-obsessed member of the Vinous Posse. OK, fine.

2009 DOMAINE TEMPIER, Bandol, France (Morgan & York, $37). Unmistakably unique. Pale onion-skin color, elegant, pitch-perfect balance, with some tar and Oriental spice, thanks to the Mourvedre grape. Consensus reaction to sipping this alongside some homemade black olive tapenade on a slice of baguette: “Oh my God!” Definitely worth trying if you’re up for the splurge.

2009 MULDERBOSCH, Cabernet Sauvignon Rosé, Coastal Region, South Africa (Everyday Wines, $12). TOP VALUE! Toast the World Cup with this gem from the Cape. Deep salmon color, described by one taster as “Costa Rica sunset.” Slightly herbal, spicy and dense, watermelon flavors. A rich, juicy rosé that should hold its own alongside well-seasoned fare from the grill.

2009 CHATEAU MORGUES DU GRES, Nimes, France (Village Corner, $14). Salmon colored and full bodied, with interesting lemony aromas and flavors. Beautifully balanced but fairly simple.

2009 TABOR HILL Cabernet Franc Rosé, Lake Michigan Shore, Michigan (Currently available from the winery; in stores soon at about $11). TOP VALUE! Paler than previous versions, with a slight sulfur nose that blows off, from its recent bottling. Light, elegant, berry fruit and great acidity, red pear finish. Several tasters thought this was French; “A daily wine that should be on everyone’s table,” said one.

2009 VILLA DES ANGES, Languedoc, France (Arbor Farms, $11.50). Predominantly from Cinsault grapes; viscous mouthfeel and more concentration than many of the others. Bright berries and red fruits. Several tasters agreed with the suggestion that it would match well with grilled lamb.

2009 CHATEAU DU DONJON, Minervois, France (Village Corner, $15). 40% Syrah, 40% Cinsault, 20% Grenache. Medium pink. Hints of melon, strawberry and cotton candy; one taster likened it to “watermelon Jolly Rancher.” Slightly hot finish.

2009 DOMAINE DU POUJOL, Languedoc, France (Morgan & York, $15). Vibrant light pink color. Everyone branded this as a lightly fragrant, simple summer quaffer with a hint of lean and salty mineralty on the finish that led one taster to suggest it would go well with oysters. “Boat wine,” said another.

2009 DOMAINE DU SALVARD, Cheverny, Loire Valley, France (Morgan & York, $17; Sold Out). From northern France’s Loire Valley, an unusual blend of Gamay and Pinot Noir. Pale pink, strawberry and cherry notes, with its northern origins evident from a higher-than-average level of bright acidity.

2009 LA VIEILLE FERME, Ventoux, France (Trader Joe’s, $7.50; Plum Market, $6). TOP VALUE! Another Grenache/Cinsault blend from southern France. Watermelon color and a red currant nose. Nicely balanced with a rich, round mouthfeel, but not a lot of fruit.

2008 MAGHINARDO Rosato, Emilia, Italy (Everyday Wines, $15). The lone Italian in the tasting, we made an exception for this vintage 2008, the most recent rosé from this late-releasing winery. An unusual, somewhat rustic wine that had tasters reaching for “sweet and sour” descriptions – boiled sweets, red apples and grapefruit, berries and acidity. Sweet wins out at the finish.

2009 MUGA, Rioja, Spain (Plum Market, $12). Lightly fruity but austere, with some tannins in evidence. “Like pink Champagne without the bubbles,” said one taster. Another suggested it would be best served alongside a Zingerman’s ham sandwich.

2009 ROSÉ DES KARANTES, Languedoc, France (Whole Foods on Eisenhower, $14). Mourvedre/Syrah/Grenache. Darker color and some spice from the Mourvedre, but only moderate amounts of simple fruit and a finish that drops off quickly. An attractive label, widely available around town.

2009 2 LADS, Rosé of Cabernet Franc, Old Mission Peninsula, Michigan (Available from the winery; $17). Deepest color, easily a “light red,” and most controversial wine on the table, with divergent scores and comments. Cherry, significant sweetness, nice acidity and surprising tannins for rosé. Shows its pedigree from a less-than-ripe vintage with herbal and green pepper notes. “This is a stylistic statement,” noted one taster, approvingly. “The average consumer will find it puzzling,” said another.

2009 VEGA SINDOA Garnacha Rosé, Navarra, Spain (Whole Foods on Eisenhower, $9). Very consistent scores and comments on this Spanish version of Grenache. Fluorescent pink color, watermelon flavors and a round, nicely balanced palate fall off to an astringent, slightly hot finish.

2009 COMMANDERIE DE LA BARGEMONE, Aix en Provence, France (Whole Foods on Eisenhower, $16). A wine of much disagreement; “Overcropped saignée” was one taster’s assessment of this leaner effort, but not everyone agreed, as some folks found reasonable amounts of red fruit, with one reference to a “knuckle-dragging rosé.”

2009 CALCU, Colchagua Valley, Chile (Plum Market; $12). 50% Malbec, 40% Syrah, 10% Carmenere. “If you like strange, this is your wine,” said one taster – and that sums up the consensus. Descriptions not usually associated with quality wine flew around the table: Rhubarb, grapefruit rind, tar, burnt rubber, barnyard funk – though one taster did suggest it might work well with spicy sausages.

2009 LE PAVILLON DU CHATEAU BEAUCHENE, Côtes du Rhone, France (Plum Market, $8). Well-priced for a Rhone rosé, but not very much to like inside. Dull, slightly oxidized fruit, described by one taster as “bruised apple,” leads into a bitter finish. Possibly a defective bottle.

About the author: Joel Goldberg, an Ann Arbor area resident, is editor of the MichWine website. His Arbor Vinous column for The Chronicle is published on the first Saturday of the month.

Joel Goldberg

Visualize the Ann Arbor Art Center’s WineFest as the Châteauneuf-du-Pape of fundraisers.

The annual wine-and-food extravaganza, on tap May 6 through 8, bears a surprising resemblance to the multi-grape assemblage of the flagship wine from France’s southern Rhone, blending supporters of the century-old arts institution with a panoply of local glitterati out for some innocent merriment, plus a dollop of area wine cognoscenti keen to sample and acquire some hard-to-find bottles.

So it’s a good fit that Honorary Chair Laurence Féraud, the first French winemaker to chair WineFest, comes from first-tier Châteauneuf winery, Domaine du Pegau.

And just as some Châteauneuf producers (but not Pegau) have adapted their wines to changing customer preferences for early-drinking, more fruit-driven styles, so the 28th annual WineFest sports a different look from years past.

“We’ve thrown everything up in the air and had it come down in a new format,” says Art Center president Marsha Chamberlin. “It’s going to be this bright, colorful upbeat format in a very stylish location. We’re trying to make this an event that people can enjoy on lots of different levels.”

The makeover starts with new digs for Saturday evening’s main event: the former Pfizer facility on Plymouth Road, lately demedicalized into the University of Michigan North Campus Research Complex. Kalamazoo-based BIGThink arts collaborative will create a series of supersize installations designed to generate a sense of community throughout the space.

Hardcore bidders can hunker down for the live auction in a new, Vegas-style “bidders’ pit.” This way, explains Chamberlin, “people who aren’t into the auction don’t have to be forced to be quiet and sit and listen. They can enjoy the wine and food and each other, while the bidders can keep focused.”

Focus-worthy auction lots include two sets of Bordeaux out of the cellar of über-collector Ron Weiser, from the outstanding 1961 and 2000 vintages, a ten-bottle assortment of 1998 and 1999 Châteauneuf-du-Pape, donated by Honorary Community Chairs Rich and Karen Brown, and a ten-year collection of the ever-popular Marilyn Merlot.

Also on offer: a half-dozen travel packages, home-prepared meals by local chefs Craig Common and Scott MacInnis, and dinner at The Lark – with a bottle of 1989 Château Margaux thrown in.

On Thursday, May 6, Féraud will pour five of her wines for a Winemaker Dinner at Mediterrano. This will be the only chance during the weekend to taste two vintages of Pegau’s upscale Châteauneuf, Cuvée Laurence.

A sold-out “Wine Crawl” joins the weekend mix for the first time on Friday evening, May 7. Participants will start at the Art Center on Liberty Street to meet the Honorary Chair, then wind their way through a series of downtown drinkeries – Babs Underground Lounge, Café Felix, Gratzi, Mélange and The Chop House – sampling a small food and wine pairing at each.

Ticket pricing also receives a facelift, with the introduction of a second tier for Saturday’s event. The new General Admission ducat ($100) buys entry to the strolling supper, wine sampling and the rare wine bar, along with open seating at the live auction.

Those who spring for the Patron level ($200) receive the traditional WineFest perks, which include a custom wine glass and reserved seats for the live auction. They also get in the door an hour earlier for a reception with Féraud and an early-bird chance to snap up silent auction lots at “Buy It Now” prices.

Chamberlin said that signups were running about 50-50 between the two ticket levels.

Whether or not the new format and prices succeed in boosting interest in WineFest, many observers feel that change is long overdue in the face of a long-term slide in attendance and revenues for what was once the area’s premier charity event.

A decade ago, WineFest’s Saturday event regularly sold out more than 500 tickets and raised upwards of $250,000 for Art Center programs, representing as much as 1/3 of the organization’s annual budget.

This year’s take is projected at a mere $70,000, and the current rate of signups suggests that Saturday’s event may have difficulty reaching its goal of 400 paid attendees.

Chamberlin acknowledges that the Art Center has been forced to “wean itself off” dependence on WineFest for operating funds, and today counts on the event more to fund new projects.

The area’s economic travails account for a large chunk of the decline, especially in the area of corporate support, which Chamberlin says “has dried up.”

But critics also suggest that the event’s organizers failed to adapt to the proliferation of competing charity circuit wine events and a steady decline in the once-generous level of auction donations from left coast wineries and area collectors.

“No one was proposing anything new for years,” one WineFest insider put it succinctly.

“Part of the issue for me is whether there is an audience for WineFest any longer, in the form we currently know it,” Chamberlin said. “One of the things we’ve tried to do this year is create a broader appeal for it.”

Some of that appeal arrives in the person of the charismatic Laurence Féraud. I caught up with her while she multi-tasked at home in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, preparing a Thai green curry dinner for her two children as we chatted on the phone.

Féraud – petite, dark and intense, with a ready laugh and strong entrepreneurial bent – graduated from oenology school in Paris and returned to Châteauneuf as the region’s first female winemaker in 1986. A year later, she and her father, Paul, extracted their 17 vineyard acres from the Féraud family holdings to make their own wine under a new label: Domaine du Pegau.

She was in a celebratory mood when we spoke, saying she’d just signed “a big check” to purchase three additional acres in Châteauneuf, bringing Pegau’s current holdings to just over 50. Better still, the new vineyard comes planted with excellent vines, in the prime “La Crau” section of the appellation.

Our conversation (she’s bilingual) began with her family’s long-term ties to Ann Arbor, thanks to her father’s friendship with retired UM Professor J.C. Mathes and his wife, Rosemary, who began to spend summers in Provence about 35 years ago.

At almost the same time that Féraud and her father struck out with their own winery, Mathes begat J et R Selections to import southern Rhone wines into Michigan.

It was a match made in Provence.

Joel Goldberg: Tell me about your family’s history with J.C. Mathes.

Laurence Féraud: He’s a very close friend to us, like a member of the family. All of his life, he spent two months minimum in the south of France, and he was very close to the people. Then one day, he decided to import the wine.

[Robert] Parker started to speak about Châteauneuf-du-Pape – that was in 1992 – and everything expanded so fast. J.C. was our importer, and his business grew so fast. Like me, he was so happy about this increasing enthusiasm for Provence.

JG: You had your own property before you created Pegau, but you didn’t bottle wine under your name?

LF: I was studying, and my father worked with his parents and his brothers and sister; it was the family domaine. But when I arrived, I worked for one year with all the family, which was not very convenient for me [laughs]. So I proposed we create our own name.

JG: What does Pegau mean?

LF: It’s a clay wine pitcher. The original was found around the Pope’s palace [in Châteauneuf]. They did some excavations and some antique research; this clay pitcher is from the 14th century, from the Pope’s period.

JG: When you started out, you were the only woman running a domaine in Châteauneuf. Even though you had an education as a winemaker, was it hard for you to have people take you seriously?

LF: Yes, in the beginning it was a bit difficult. Sometimes the men clients wanted to visit only with my father. And my father really insisted; he said, “No, my daughter knows more than I do because she studied enology and she speaks English. He always tried to convince people to visit with me.”

Laurence Féraud, dressed for the harvest: Not her sister. (Photo courtesy of Laurence Féraud)

Also, I worked in the vineyard. At the beginning, the people – they didn’t laugh, but they said, “This is work for men.”

But I knew how to work in a vineyard, and dress like the men in the vineyard. But I also knew how to have a shower and how to be dressed like a woman, with high heels. When I come to an auction in Michigan, I know that I am not in a vineyard. So I am dressed different. I know how I have to be.

The people here, they didn’t understand that we can have a different face. When I am working during the harvest, making wine, picking grapes, because I have a scarf around my head, people would think I was Fatima. [roars with laughter].

Or people would say, “Oh, we met your sister at the wine fair.”

And I’d say, “No, I haven’t got any sister. It was me.” They were so shocked; they couldn’t believe it.

JG: So do you have any advice for women who are trying to make it in the wine business?

LF: My advice is to be strong, because we are better than men. [laughs]

No, our palate is quite developed, because for centuries we stay at home, we do the cooking, we have a sense of taste.

JG: There are many different grapes that can go into Châteauneuf-du-Pape. What blend do you use?

LF: It’s a blend of all the vineyards we have. About 45 acres of the vines are more than 45 years old.

There is already what we call co-planting. So the blend is already in the vineyard. Because 45 years ago, they planted blended. In fact, they still do.

The blend of Pegau is 80% Grenache, 15% Syrah, 4% Mourvedre and 1% mixed types of grapes.

JG: The newer properties you’ve bought in recent years, were those already planted?

LF: They were already planted, and in good condition, and in La Crau, in the best place. I can tell you that I paid more, but the result is the more I pay in the beginning, the less I have to work after. Because when you want good quality, a good vineyard will give you good grapes without too much working.

1990 Domaine du Pegau: Robert Parker started to speak. (Photo by the author)

JG: How many bottles of Châteauneuf do you make?

LF: I produce 80,000 bottles of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, the Cuvée Reservée, and 6,000 to 8,000 bottles of Cuvée Laurence.

JG: And Cuvée da Capo? [The estate’s top wine, made in small amounts in better vintages. The 2007 got a pre-release score of 98-100 points from Robert Parker.]

LF: When I do the Da Capo, I’m not doing the Cuvée Laurence. The Cuvée Laurence is easy to do every year; it’s an extra aging of the Cuvée Reservée. When it’s a perfect harvest and a perfect vintage, then I am doing the Cuvée da Capo, not the Cuvée Laurence. So the production is exactly the same.

JG: You also have a second line of wines under your own name.

LF: Starting in 2001 and 2002, I created another company called “Selection Laurence Féraud.” I’m not buying or producing wine, but I do the selection. I go to different cellars, different producers, I taste the different wines and I blend.

I created a Vin du Pays d’Oc [from the Languedoc] called “Pegau Vino,” and I have a Séguret [a less-known Rhone village].

“Plan Pegau” [a non-appellation table wine] existed under Domaine du Pegau, but the quality was not consistent. So I decided to have more consistent quality, and to blend in a big volume in another place. We could not do that at Domaine du Pegau.

I blend 50% of the Plan Pegau from the Domaine, with some other wine – enough to have the quantity for 60,000 bottles in one bottling. We sell that wine for export, with a screw cap.

JG: So you’re becoming a negociant? [merchants who buy wine produced by others and sell them under their own brand]

LF: If I look at my job name, it’s blender [laughs]. In French, we say assembleur, which is nicer.

JG: How many countries does Pegau distribute in today?

LF: Thirty countries, 80 wine importers around the world.

JG: What wines will you be pouring in Ann Arbor for WineFest?

LF: On the 8th, all the people will have a cocktail of Pegau Vino. Then we’ll have the Séguret, then the Plan Pegau, and then the Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Domaine du Pegau red.

JG: Are you serving either the Cuvée Laurence or Cuvée da Capo?

LF: Cuvée da Capo? For over 100 people? No, it’s impossible. [Roars with laughter] But what I’m giving for the auction is Cuvée da Capo in a magnum, three Cuvée Laurence, a weekend at a B&B I have in Châteauneuf, a day with me in the vineyards, and lunch or dinner at my place.

WineFest tickets are available at the website, or by phoning the Ann Arbor Art Center at 734-994-8004, x101.

About the author: Joel Goldberg, an Ann Arbor area resident, edits the MichWine website and tweets @MichWine. His Arbor Vinous column for The Chronicle is published on the first Saturday of the month.