Love is Crafts at Home
By Mike Lerchenfeldt / Photography by Mike Ferdinande
All of us love going to tasting rooms, but sometimes you just want to sit on your own patio with your favorite craft. So how do you buy howlers, growlers, cans, or bottles to take home? It’s best to buy directly from your favorite local crafter right when you visit. And some do offer online ordering; however, shipping can be tricky. But more and more crafters have developed partnerships with a local distributor or local retailer in order to distribute their products and get into more homes.
Michigan By The Bottle Tasting Room locations have built partnerships with a diverse spectrum of wineries across the state. Their tasting rooms are set up a little differently and serve as an off-site tasting room for their partners’ products where the team can talk knowledgeably and passionately about them.
Michigan By The Bottle only teams up with a limited number of wineries per location, and focuses exclusively on their products. According to Owner Cortney Casey, “My husband, Shannon, and I select the wineries with which we choose to partner with at our tasting rooms. We strive to focus primarily on smaller, family-owned boutique wineries with little or no distribution. In cases where we have opted to partner with larger Michigan wineries, we focus on their higher-end and more limited products that are not widely distributed.” Casey added that the wines they feature are all made from Michigan-grown grapes, with a complete spectrum of wines available.
Both locations of Vince & Joe’s Gourmet Market support Michigan crafts. Both offer a large selection of Michigan wine brands including: Bowers Harbor, Black Star Farms, Blake’s Orchard, Brys Estate, Chateau Chantal, Chateau Grand Traverse, Fenn Valley, Leelanau Cellars, Mackinaw Trail, Mari Vineyards, Shady Lane, and St. Julian.
Beyond wine, both locations offer a growler station with actual taps to fill growlers. Once the barrel in the machine runs out, they change it with a new craft. There is no definitive rotation schedule because of the different keg sizes and differing demands of each keg. Customers are encouraged to follow Vince & Joe’s on the Untappd app for updates and current menu options. The growler station runs best on unique, hard-to-find beers.
According to Nancy Hilliker, Wine and Beer Director at Vince & Joe’s, “The growler station offers customers convenient access to draft-only beers, a fresher beer experience, and the option for experimentation with different beer styles. Also, the major bonus is customer sampling before purchase.”
David Gagnon, Vintner and General Manager at Cellar 104 Tasting Room in Mount Clemens, built a partnership with Total Wine & More, a Maryland-based company. Now, in addition to selling wines strictly at the Cellar 104 Tasting Room, select wines are also available for customers at all four Total Wine & More Michigan locations. Gagnon added that the process has been fairly seamless. He is currently working with the regional ordering captain to get their wines available online through the store’s website. As a boutique winery, they produce 3,600 gallons of premium quality wines per year. They have over 20 varietals available in their tasting room, and Total Wine & More is selling 15 of these.
According to Store Manager Andrew Perry, at Total Wine & More, “Our Regional Ordering Captain and store management along with our Store Support Center work in tandem to ensure that we have the newest trends as well as a healthy local portfolio. We also partner with DoorDash so customers have the option of getting their order delivered or they can come to the store and check-in using our mobile app and they don’t even need to leave their car.”
In addition to Michigan wine, hard cider and spirits, Perry mentioned that they carry upwards of 600 craft beers from Michigan, depending on the season. At the moment, they carry beer from eight breweries in Oakland County and two breweries in Macomb County. They do have many different flavors from each brewery.
Blake’s Hard Cider is a distributing craft champ in and outside of Michigan. Customers can find 14 unique products from Blake’s on various store shelves in craft beverage sections. This includes their five core/year-round ciders, three Kinder Series ciders, three Dessert Drops, and this year for the first time, their three cocktail-inspired Bar Cart Series offerings. Blake’s is available in 22 states and 10,000 retail stores. This number does not include on-premise bars and restaurants. Since the lead time to get a printed can is over six months now, Blake’s must start their product road mapping conversations a year ahead of time.