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Leland on
Lake Michigan is known for its historic and
picturesque Fishtown area docks filled with tiny
wooden shops along the Leland River.
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TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. —
The Old Mission Peninsula is a colorful place.
It starts with the
multi-hued waters of the Lake Michigan bays. The water
looks like it came from the Caribbean with its aquamarine
and turquoise colors.
More than 2.6 million
cherry trees were in snowy bloom and the vineyards were
coming alive with greenery. You are surrounded by a touch
of the North Woods, too.
My wife, Pat, and I spent a
delightful weekend in a winery in May on the fingerlike
Old Mission Peninsula just north of Traverse City.
What, you ask, does one do
in a winery? Very simply, we relaxed and sampled wines at
Chateau Chantal, a place that calls itself an Old World
inn along one of Michigan's wine trails. It is a warm and
charming place with superior wines that are among the best
in Michigan and are comparable to Napa Valley and, dare it
be said, European wines.
The
winery/bed-and-breakfast with its 11 rooms sits on a
ridge, surrounded by vineyards and cherry trees. You can
see bays to the west and to the east. The rooms and suites
are decorated in French country style.
The winery was established
in 1983 when owners Robert and Nadine Begin (a former
priest and a former nun who married) replaced cherry
orchards with grafted vinifera grapevines, the types grown
in the French Bordeaux region that sits at the same 45th
latitude.
The 65 acres are planted in
pinot grigio, chardonnay, riesling, pinot noir,
gewurztraminer, merlot and pinot meunier grapes. The
winery produces about 50,000 gallons of wine per year.
Like many other nearby
wineries, Chateau Chantal has a public tasting room with
free samples of its 27 handcrafted wines from dry to sweet
to sparkling.
Each bed and breakfast
guest is entitled to a full glass of wine per night. Plus
you can get samples like visitors to the winery's tasting
room. But the big plus is that when the tasting room
closes at night to drop-in visitors and the staff leaves,
it remains open to the bed and breakfast guests.
The bed and breakfast also
features a great room with piano and fireplace and an
outdoor patio with tables and chairs. There is a computer
for guest use plus a library. The local newspaper is
delivered to your door.
Chateau Chantal — it is
not the only Traverse City winery that offers lodging —
serves up a killer breakfast for guests. An optional tour
of the winery in the basement is offered after breakfast.
You are on your own for other meals, but there are plenty
of options on the peninsula and 12 miles away in Traverse
City.
The winery offers an array
of cooking and wine-tasting classes and seminars, tapas
tours, concerts and other events.
For more information,
contact Chateau Chantal at 15900 Rue de Vin, Old Mission
Peninsula, Traverse City, MI 49686, 231-223-4100 or
800-969-4009. The Web site is http://www.chateauchantal.com.
Chateau Chantal is one of
64 wineries in Michigan that annually produce wine worth
$800 million. The wineries attract 800,000 visitors a year
and that aids the economy by an additional $10 million.
Eight new wineries have opened this year.
The Traverse City area is
the epicenter for Michigan winemaking. There are 32
wineries in northwest Michigan with seven on the Old
Mission Peninsula and 20 on the Leelanau Peninsula. You
can get information at http://www.wineriesofoldmission.com
or http://www.lpwines.com.
Michigan has four wine
trails (two in the Traverse City area). Read more at
http://www.michiganwines.com.
Traverse City itself is the
No. 2 tourist destination in Michigan with more than 2
million visitors a year, behind only Mackinac Island. It
draws heavily from the Detroit and Chicago areas and has
been a tourist hot spot for 150 years because of its
beautiful setting.
TC — as it is called
locally — is known for its sugar-sand beaches, golf
courses, imposing sand dunes, Indian casinos, ski areas,
winter sports, summer tall ship cruises, lighthouses,
shops, galleries, bike trails and a world-class music
school (Interlochen Center for the Arts).
But everything in Traverse
City seems to revolve around its waters. The city has 181
miles of shoreline on 32-mile-long Grand Traverse Bay and
Lake Michigan, and 149 inland lakes.
The west leg of Grand
Traverse Bay is filled with parks and fronts on the
downtown; the east bay is hotels and cottages. The city
can be charming, old-fashioned, touristy, a bit snooty and
crowded, especially on summer weekends. It has a lively
after-dark scene.
Traverse City is heavy on
motels, each with its own patch of bay beach — upwards
of 4,200 rooms for visitors.
It has a compact downtown
with 100 shops and eateries. It is surprisingly
sophisticated, with quality restaurants and microbreweries
for a city of 15,000 and a metropolitan area of 142,000.
It is home to a culinary institute and a strong
local-grown movement. A specialty is artisan cheeses.
One place you can't miss is
New York chocolatier Jacques Torres and his shop on East
Front Street.
An old Victorian state-run
asylum is being converted into a shopping area. It is
called the Village at Grand Traverse Commons and sits
about 11/2 miles west of downtown.
There are 50 shops and
stores in the basement shopping arcade. More are planned
in the imposing structure, built in 1885 to house 3,500
people. It closed in 1989. More shops, restaurants and
even a hotel are planned on the 500-acre campus near the
hospital.
Nearby Leland on Lake
Michigan is known for its historic and picturesque
Fishtown area docks filled with tiny wooden shops along
the Leland River.
You can take ferries from
Leland to North and South Manitou islands, wilderness
areas managed by the National Park Service.
Sleeping Bear Dunes
National Lakeshore with its 400-foot-tall dunes, 35 miles
of beaches and 55 miles of hiking trails is only 30
minutes west of Traverse City on the Lake Michigan shore.
Just north of Chateau
Chantal is the Old Mission Point Lighthouse, with its
30-foot light tower built in 1870. It is part of an
inviting 400-acre park.
Old Mission Peninsula
itself has a breezy country vibe with its vineyards and
orchards.
A warning to anyone
visiting Traverse City: It is the unabashed Cherry Capital
of the World. A big 150-event cherry festival runs for a
week every July.
About 2 million tart cherry
trees and 600,000 sweet cherries grow around Traverse
City. It is estimated that 75 percent of the world's tart
cherries, the kinds used in pies, pastries and jams, are
grown here.
Cherries pop up on local
menus, and it is said that you can purchase 370
cherry-containing food items at the Cherry Stop with
stores in Traverse City and Glen Arbor. Sweet cherry wine
is also big.
The city also loves to host
festivals throughout the year.
For information on Traverse
City, write to 101 W. Grandview Parkway, Traverse City, MI
49684, or call 800-TRAVERSE. You can also check out
http://www.visittraversecity.com.
For Sleeping Bear Dunes
information, write to 9920 Front St., Highway M-72,
Empire, MI 49630, or call 231-326-5134. The Web site is
http://www.nps.gov/slbe.
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