2024 Dry Riesling
Lime, slate, sea air. The wine the hill was planted for.
$24
Suttons Bay · Leelanau Peninsula · Michigan
Forty acres of vines and sheep, three hundred feet above the bay.
Estate Riesling, Pinot Blanc and Blaufränkisch. Sheep's-milk cheese aged in a cave we dug into the hill. A tasting room that looks straight down the rows to the water.
Now pouring
2024 Dry Riesling Lime pith, wet slate, a long dry finish. $24 a bottle, $18 for a flight of five.Out of the cave
Leelanau Tomme, 7 months The spring-milk wheels came out this week. Nutty, grassy, a little sweet at the rind.In the pasture
Ewes are dry for the season Milking resumes in late March after lambing. Cheese tours still run; the sheep just sleep in.The farm
A vineyard and a dairy on the same hill, because the hill asked for both.
The top of Juniper Hill is thin, stony, south-facing ground that drains fast and ripens late. That is exactly what Riesling wants. The lower pastures hold water, grow thick clover and orchard grass, and face the lake breeze. That is what a flock of East Friesian and Lacaune ewes wants.
So we farm both. Nineteen acres of vines on the upper slopes, 120 milking ewes on the lower forty, and a cheese cave cut into the bank between them. Everything you taste here was grown, pressed, milked or aged within sight of the tasting-room windows.
Estate wines
Five wines. One hill.
Cool-climate whites that taste of the slate they grew in, one serious red, a pét-nat for the terrace, and a cider from the old orchard we never had the heart to pull out.
2024 Pinot Blanc
Pear, almond skin, a soft, creamy middle. The cheese wine.
$22
2022 Blaufränkisch
Black cherry, pepper, dried thyme. 14 months in neutral oak.
$34
2025 Pét-Nat
Cloudy, dry, apple-and-lees. Crown cap. Drink it cold, outside.
$28
The creamery
Sheep's milk, raw and whole, aged in the dark.
We make four cheeses, all from our own flock, all by hand in a 300-gallon vat, three mornings a week from April to October. The wheels go straight into the cave at 52°F and 90% humidity, where Tess turns and brushes them by hand until they are ready.
The Leelanau Tomme is the one that pays the bills. The Bay Blue is the one that wins the ribbons. Juniper Ash is the one Tess would take to a desert island.
"People ask which came first, the vines or the sheep. The answer is the hill. We just listened to it."
Plan a visit
Seventeen miles north of Traverse City, on M-22.
Turn east on E Juniper Hill Road just past the Suttons Bay marina, follow the gravel up the hill for a mile and a half, and park under the maples. Walk-ins are welcome at the bar; the terrace and the cave tour take reservations.