Autumn Wine

One of the fun things about Traverse City is the variety of restaurants and wineries.

Saturday night we decided to try something different and made our way to Boone's Long Lake Inn. They not only get a demerit for the apostrophe error on their web site, I don't recommend the restaurant! After hearing how good it was, I was very disappointed. The rustic lodge is beautiful, popular, and the service was good, but I found the food quite ordinary, especially after eating at Amical (a French Bistro and one of my favorite restaurants) the night before.

My husband has been reading Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails by Ted "Dr. Cocktail" Haig so this weekend we explored Traverse City's many wine shops look for unusual ingredients. You might think northern Michigan is too cold for grapes but the Leelanau Peninsula is full of Wineries! I hardly ever drink but do like very dry red wine. This weekend I discovered two new favorites at Cherry Republic. Their store in downtown Traverse City offers free samples of all their wines and they tell all about each one as you are tasting it.We tried two: Cherry Red Wine and Cherry Spiced Wine. Cherry Red is a very dry mix of 80% grapes and 20% cherries. It's not expensive and it is the best wine I've ever had. Cherry Spiced Wine has cinnamon and orange in it and is good at room temperature or heated (aka mulled wine). I'm so glad we found Cherry Republic! They also ship if we can't find a local distributor after our supply runs out.