Wine Tasting in Traverse City

A few weekends ago I went to Traverse City to celebrate my friend Ricky’s birthday.

We left Grand Rapids on February 1st, aka the first day it didn’t hurt to leave the house after the polar vortex. After the majority of the city being shut down from Monday – Thursday, I was going stir crazy, so I was thrilled to leave…even though we were heading more north.

Friday night was cold, but by Saturday afternoon it was in the 30s (whoohoo heat wave) and very manageable.

First off – let’s chat about our AirBnb. Pretty much my mid-century modern dreams come true + plenty of inspiration for our fixer upper. It was funny, because as soon as we walked in the door, I recognized the house. Turns out I was already following them on Instagram, because the owners are friends with Andrea, a blogger out of Lansing. I remember she shared their new AirBnb months prior and I followed along in case I went to Traverse. I didn’t book any of this trip, but it was a complete surprise to me. Check out the TC Mod Lodge here! 

(If you are heading to Traverse soon definitely check it out – we slept 8 people comfortably!)

Second – the wine. I’ve been to Traverse City multiple times, but never for wine tasting, so this was new to me. If you’re also a newbie – you should check out the Leelanau Peninsula Wine Trail website – it’s chock full of info (including this map!)

There are more than 25 wineries, with most of them open 12pm-5pm during the winter, so if you want to hit most of them I would recommend tasting on both Saturday and Sunday. We didn’t move very fast, and ended up visiting 6 spots on Saturday before they closed.

We started out at 45 North – I really liked this one and have heard from friends that it’s their favorite. I know nothing about wine, but I enjoyed my 5 tastes for $7 and ate WAY too many oyster crackers haha.

I really should preface that this was more “alcohol tasting” than “wine tasting” since we made stops at Tandem Ciders and Hoplot Brewing amongst the wineries haha.

Tandem Ciders is in this cute white barn, with a small tasting room in front + another in back. I would love to go back and experience it in the summer so we could be outside.

^^can you see our photobombers?

After Tandem, we checked out Silver Leaf Winery. This was probably the smallest and most low key of all the places we went. It was tucked away down this beautiful snowy street…so naturally we parked on the side of the road and took pictures haha.

 

From there we made our way to Leelanau Cellars – this was definitely the nicest of the places we went to, but Leelanlau is much bigger than some of the others and sells their wine in grocery stores across Michigan, so I wasn’t surprised.  I loved that it was right on the water, and I can imagine it’s gorgeous in the summer. They are currently rebranding so we got to take our tasting glasses home for free!

Since one can only snack on crackers for so long, we stopped into Hop Lot Brewing for lunch + beer. The igloos are available for free, but first you have to make a reservation at the bar. Even though it was packed when we got there, we didn’t have to wait more than 20 minutes for ours to be available. Eating lunch in an igloo was cool, but still very cold since our zipper was broken, so we didn’t last too long.

Last but not least, we visited Ciccone Vineyard & Winery (this is actually Madonna’s parent’s winery!) We arrived at 4:50 and they closed at 5:00, so we tried to make our visit speedy. All in all we had a great time, and I loved getting to see how pretty Traverse City is (even when it’s freezing!).

I definitely want to go back and visit different wineries this summer, because I’m sure I would love being able to sip wine + sit outside, so if you’re familiar with Traverse City make sure to let me know your favorite winery.

Thanks for stopping by today!

xo, Maddy