Extreme Wine Tasting

OR CALL IT A WORKOUT ON SNOWY TRAILS MADE BETTER. EITHER WAY, WE’LL RAISE A GLASS TO WHAT BRIAN GROSSNICKLE DID FOR A WINTER’S DAY IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN.

- Lissa Edwards

Harvest time is typically peak tasting season in Northern Michigan wine country; winter, not so much. But 45 North’s tasting room, tucked between the villages of Lake Leelanau and Suttons Bay, is hopping on this icy cold, snow-and-sun-glazed day. The parking lot is filled with cars sporting Thule roof boxes stuffed with skis and snowshoes, and roof racks mounted with fat tire bikes. Inside, the tasting room is elbow-to-elbow with rosy-cheeked patrons shedding layers and chilling with glasses of wine. Meet winter, the new autumn at 45 North.

These winter crowds have a lot to do with a brilliant idea that dawned on Brian Grossnickle four years ago. That was shortly after the lean, perpetually tan and perpetual-motion snowboarder/mountain biker moved back from the mountains of New Mexico to help his parents, Steve and Lori Grossnickle, manage their 104-acre vineyard. From spring pruning to autumn harvest, Brian’s days are jam-packed. But as he points out: “There’s nothing for a vineyard manager to do in the winter.”

On those cold, boring days, Brian started envisioning the two-tracks that wind through the rows of vines as winter recreation trails. Brian concedes he wasn’t the first person around NoMi wine country to think that customers would enjoy sweating their way around a frozen vineyard. Several vineyards were already welcoming folks with their snowshoes and skis. But Brian is pretty sure he is the first to take it to the full-blown, groomed-trail level.