Michigan and France are both great wine areas, but one seems to have garnered all the attention over the centuries. That one, of course, happens to be France, the home of Bordeaux and Burgundy, or as we like to say, the other Leelanau and Old Mission Peninsulas. One can make the argument that the two have many more similarities than dissimilarities than any other two regions in the world. First, both are geographically linked along the 45th parallel separated only by 5000 air miles; this parallel is the halfway point between the equator and the north pole. As the earth oscillates along its north-south axis, this parallel delineates an area that has direct irradiation from the sun at the same angles and, hence, the same ultraviolet time exposure during the summer growing season.

But perhaps the greatest similarity is that of its terroir (for the non-informed, terroir is the combination of soil, climate, and micro climates). Northern Michigan was carved out by the recession of the glaciers thirty thousand years ago, leaving a landscape hilly with soil filled with minerals and salts of weak bases, i.e. limestone, magnesium and other “hard” salts. These salts absorb the hydroxide radical leaving free acid as protons to be absorbed by all growing compounds and, like Burgundy, this free hydrogen ion makes for a more acidic grape and lower pH, a measure of acidity. Acidity is needed to balance the sugar content of the grape; wines with high pHs are usually described as “flabby”, a less than complementary wine descriptor. Many American viticulture areas are great sugar producers, but without the acidity. Connoisseurs of ice wines know that the high sugar content must be balanced by a low pH (high acidity) value and many of the ice and icebox wines of Michigan have pHs of 3 and even less.

So much for chemistry, the other similarity is that of climate and growing season, and again the similarities of France and Michigan are eerily similar. Although the winters of Michigan are considered more severe than those of France, the two peninsulas of Michigan use the surrounding expanse of Lake Michigan as a coolant in summer and a warmer in winter. Water temperature in extreme quantities can neither be super heated nor super cooled, so cooler summer evenings in Michigan allow the sugar mechanism of the grape growth to slow in the evening leaving the metabolism of the flavonoids, the double bonded organic compounds found just under the skin of the grape, to compound and concentrate along with the sugars. The long autumns of Michigan with temperatures at 45 degrees (note: the second 45th degree) completely shut off the sugar production and double up on the flavonoids. Yippee, a perfect growing season (unfortunately not 2009) produces grapes of the same calibre of the vinifera (i.e. old world grapes: pinot gris, chardonnay, riesling, pinot noir, cabernet franc) are of the same quality as those of France. In fact, a famous winemaker of Napa Valley feels that Michigan’s riesling and cabernet franc with their turpine compounds and flavonoids are the best in the world. Checking the results of wine competitions, one finds that Michigan has done extremely well which gives credence to these facts.