Michigan's Cherry Creek Cellars strikes gold in the heartland
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Cherry Creek Cellars in Parma, Mich., may be small in size, but it's not short on courage, passion or the will to make good wine. Opening a tasting room in the state's heartland three years ago, the boutique winery has charged into every annual Michigan wine competition since then, snatching up shiny medals each year.
Last week, at the 28th annual Michigan Wine & Spirits Competition, owner John Burtka took two golds - for his Montage, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Chancellor, and Cherry wine.
“It's about time,” he said with glee in his voice. “I'm very excited about it. It's where I want to be.” Burtka has a taste for big wins. As an amateur winemaker, he took two consecutive “Best of Show” awards at the Michigan State Fair.
His small winery, where he is the winemaker and cellarmaster and his family volunteers to be the vineyard crew and bottling line, produces 1,000 cases of red, white and fruit wines, with eye-catching, poster-style labels created by artist Kim Fugiwara of Rochester Hills, Mich..
Even if you have never heard of this new Michigan winery, you would probably pick up a bottle and examine the labels, including a jazz saxophonist, a rooster, a tall ship and even a take-off on Rosie the Riveter.
Burtka, 47, has a day job as an executive at Tower Automotive, a parts manufacturer in Novi, Mich. He moved his family (wife Denise, son John, 15, and daughter Jessica, 12) from Bloomfield Hills to Somerset, Mich., about 10 miles from the winery, in 2003.
This year, he purchased the 20 acres of farmland he had been leasing for the vineyard and winery, and he can gaze on two acres of Pinot Noir that have been in the ground three years, enough time to yield a small crop this year. His next plan is to build a Michigan-themed tasting room on a rise overlooking I-94.
Like many other new wineries, he has contracts to buy grapes, including Cabernet Sauvignon from Lemon Creek Winery in Berrien Springs, the biggest wine grape grower in the state.
Cherry Creek has a tasting room on the property in Parma (the mailing address is Albion, Mich.), and a satellite store at Meckley's Flavor Fruit Farm in Somerset (the mailing address is Cement City!).
Cherry Creek makes mostly red wines in a range of styles, from dry to sweet, but there are a few whites, including a Chardonnay and a Sauvignon Blanc (from grapes purchased outside the state), and a Gewurztraminer to be released this summer. He's hoping to make Riesling and Pinot Grigio in the future.
Burtka's passion is big, dry, red wine, but he has learned the tasting room customers often have a sweet tooth, so wines like the his Ninja Red and Rosie's Rose are more “easy-drinking,” as he puts it.
He loves the action in the tasting room and is always looking for ways to get people to branch out in their tastes. “I always challenge people. I say, 'if you like dry wines, try my dessert wine first. If you drink sweet, then try this red.' ”
He's also encountered the bias that wine elitists tend to have against regional wines. “If you are looking for a California type wine in Michigan, you won't find it,” Burtka says. “But if you are looking for a French or German-style wine, you will.”
-Sondra Silfven, The Wine Report - Detroit News