Day 1 Part 2

After lunch we decided to head over to “The Village at Grand Traverse Commons” which is an area with some shops, a couple of wine tasting rooms, and a farmers market (on Mondays).

Oh, and it’s an old asylum.

How does that not make it into the name!? What is this “The Village” crap! How can you not HIGHLIGHT the fact that this massive, old building on 300 acres of gorgeous green land used to house crazy people during an era when Asylums were terrifying places????

Maybe not everyone would see that as a selling point….

But I think it’s pretty cool.

Anyway, we’re going to be going over there at least one more time for dinner later this week, but they have a farmer’s market on Mondays from 2-6 so we thought it would be fun to stop by. We got there before the market started so we went into the shops area, which is full of fairly typical and adorable boutiques and galleries and the tasting room for Black Star Farms. The guy working in there was just finishing up with a really big group of people when we got there, so we wandered a little and looked at their offerings. They’re also a distillery, and they have some pretty good looking fruit brandies and fortified wines in addition to their regular wine.  We sat down and started talking to the guy working behind the counter. We tried five wines (and then a sixth cause the guy was being nice and wanted us to try the cherry dessert wine along with some dark chocolate – YUM). All the wines were really good, but the two that really stuck out were the pinot noir, (which has won awards and is probably the best Pinot I’ve ever had, I fear all pinot noirs will pale in comparison to this wine at least until I’ve managed to forget how smooth and complex and DELICIOUS it was) and the Maple Dessert wine. He told us about how they got the idea for this wine. They had some sugar maple trees out on the farm and they would run lines down the hill from the tapped trees into the trough down in the parking lot which was set over an open fire (20-50 liters of sap go into making 1 liter of maple syrup, thank you Wikipedia). The people who were working the fire would drink apple brandy to stay warm (cause the open fire wasn't enough?), but some people, for whom the brandy was too strong, would cut it with the “maple water.” So that’s how they got the idea.

It’s an apple wine, strengthened with apple brandy, with a splash of maple syrup thrown in and it is delicious.  We also got a couple of souvenir glasses which we can take to any of the Black Star tasting rooms (there’s one not too far from where we’re staying) at any time and try 5 wines whenever we want. We will probably be taking them up on that offer.

I never got the guys name, but he was a really friendly and pleasant person to talk to and a fantastic way to begin our honeymoon. He encouraged us to wait to buy wine, since it’s hot today and we didn’t want to risking overheating our wine in the car, and then he pointed us towards the farmers market, which was our next stop.

We wandered across the street to a lawn that had a few tables spread out on it with people selling goods. There was a guy selling taquitos and a woman selling homemade baking mixes among others. As we were walking by a man selling wild leeks and homemade herb mixes, he picked up one of his mixes and said “This one is really good, I just invented it…or discovered it, I guess, it was out there, I just found it.” Which give me this image of a man wandering around in the woods, picking leaves, drying them and seeing how they do on his food.

We smiled and moved on.

The next table was full of gorgeous looking strawberries which I’d been hoping to see. I asked to try one, and the girl just said “Strawberries are $4 a quart.” I don’t know if she didn’t hear me say “try” or what, but I decided it was worth it.

AND IT WAS.

It’s less that 24 hours later as I write this and Jay and I ate them ALL.

After grabbing our strawberries, and with me merrily munching on them all the way, we went over to Higher Grounds coffee which was in a building just off the lawn where the market was being held. They roast their own coffee in small batches (you know, 20 pounds or something like that, not 8 ounces like Jay). The building isn’t air conditioned at it was quite warm outside, so it was even warmer inside. It’s very much a hippie coffee shop. They sell all kinds of fair trade goods, and have a bunch of CDs from local artists. Jay ordered some Guatemalan for us, made in a Chemex (they offer multiple brewing methods). Once the coffee got to us, I loaded it up with half and half and demerara sugar (Damn, no skim milk or splenda in sight, damn, damn, damn.) and we enjoyed perfectly hot coffee in an uncomfortably warm coffee shop and DIDN’T CARE cause it was THAT GOOD. With the cream and sugar it tasted like dulce de leche. it was delicious, and I’m pretty sure it’s only partly because of the stuff I added. 

After we finished our coffee (and wiped the sweat off of our faces) we headed back to the car and headed north up the Old Mission Peninsula to our bed and breakfast at Chateau Chantal.

The drive up was both very pretty and a little sad. While we were all enjoying a fantastically warm March up here in Michigan, the cherry and apple growers were mourning their own inability to tell their trees not to bloom yet. When the inevitable last frost came, the cherry and apple blossoms died and the orchards lost 75-95% of their crop. So instead of seeing cherry trees heavy with almost ready to pick fruit, we just saw trees. Every once in while you might catch a glimpse of red on a branch that managed to cling to some of its flowers, but for the most part it was one big reminder that we wouldn’t be getting much in the way of Michigan cherries this year. Fortunately, grapes are a little slower to bloom and were little more than sticks when the warm weather in came in March, so the wineries aren’t out a years work. A lot of them also make cherry wine though, so it’s a shame that they won’t be able to make it this year.

After a gorgeous drive up the peninsula, with certain points narrow enough that you could see water on either side, we got to Chateau Chantal, which sits at the very top of a hill right in the middle between the bays, so we had a fantastic view all around. 

The woman working at the front desk welcomed us and showed us our room, which is about the same size as our last apartment in Boston….or maybe a little bigger.  She showed us to the tasting room and told us the rules: guests can taste as many wines as they want for free and each guest is permitted a glass of wine per night. If we wanted to hold the tasting until after the tasting room was already closed, we could help ourselves to anything that was open (on the honor system, sounds good to me, we didn’t take advantage of this, since we were both on the verge of a food coma by the time we got back that night, but it was cute). 

After we settled in to the room, we went on a short drive up to the top of the peninsula to a place called light house park. 

We walked on the beach and Jay got a little giddy at having sand between his toes. I also got a picture of a black squirrel (though I had to chase him around a tree or two to get it). I’m slightly obsessed with black squirrels cause I’d never seen them until we got to Michigan. I feel like they would make really good villains in the Redwall books, or something like that, but this one was actually really cute. I’m pretty sure he’s on the younger side.

After that we headed back to the B&B and went to do some wine tasting.

So…the wine….

eh.

The wine at Chateau Chantal was actually pretty disappointing. I don’t have much to say about it. We did get to taste some Icewine, which was DELICIOUS but Icewine is always delicious, and I don’t think it’s all that impressive to create a delicious icewine, especially when you’re charging $70 for a bottle. There also seems to be a correlation between wines we like and pleasant bar tenders (for lack of a better term). Jay wondered if our tastes were so easily influenced by the people selling the wine, but I decided that it's just a lot easier to be nice and friendly when you know the wine you're selling is really good. 

At 8:00 we went to dinner at the Boathouse. I’ve always wanted to do a tasting menu, and they had one that was actually really well priced and also somewhat customizable so we could make sure there wasn’t anything on there that Jay wouldn’t eat, so I managed to talk Jay into it. I take full responsibility for that. It was a fantastic meal and almost all of the dishes we had were truly phenomenal, but the boathouse and I apparently have different ideas of what “Seven course tasting menu” means. I think that means seven delicious courses, scaled down appropriately for the number of courses you’re have. For them, “tasting menu” apparently means 7 full courses.

It was rough.

We barely made it through all the courses. We didn’t finish the sixth, and we took the dessert to go.

It was delicious food, but at this point I can still remember how miserable I was after we were done, so descriptions are going to have to wait until a time when I can think about it without my stomach hurting. But the steak knives were really neat, so here's a picture.

We stumbled home, groaning in gluttonous pain, and did our best to sleep.

Coming up on Day 2:

The Winery tour

3 more wine tastings

Our new hotel room

The magic of Tums