Chateau Chantal holds 11th Harvest Festival

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Michael Harris, 14, of Oxford, holds his brother, Brandon, 4, as his stepbrother, Devon King, right, 12, looks on Saturday during a wine-stomping event as a part of Harvest Day 2010 at Chateau Chantal on Old Mission Peninsula. Record-Eagle/Keith King
Grape juice is washed off after wine stomping Saturday. Record-Eagle/Keith King
Wine is stored in the cellar of Chateau Chantal. Record-Eagle/Keith King

October 3, 2010

BY SHERI McWHIRTER smcwhirter@record-eagle.com The Record Eagle Sun Oct 03, 2010, 07:14 AM EDT

TRAVERSE CITY — Dawn Briggs raised her eyebrows with a surprised look as she stepped one foot at a time into a half-barrel of Riesling grapes.

"It's kind of smushy," said Briggs, of Traverse City.

Briggs was among the more than 1,000 people who attended Saturday's Harvest Festival at Old Mission Peninsula's Chateau Chantal winery. She said the squishy grapes between her toes made her feel like Lucille Ball in the iconic wine-vat stomping scene from her hit television show.

"That's the first thing that popped into my head," Briggs said while standing barefoot in the lawn. "It was cool. It was fun. I thought it would be cold, but it's just a little chilly."

Inside the tasting room, Kerry Goodman and Greg Janz stood at the bar and sipped glasses of "Tonight," a dry sparkling blend of Riesling and Chardonnay.

"It's really tasty. It's like a little New Year's Eve party," Goodman said.

"But it's in your mouth," Janz chimed in.

The couple said they planned to head home to Fenton with plenty of wine for their cupboard.

"As much as we can fit in the trunk," Goodman said.

Downstairs in the cellar, volunteer Ray Isaacson enticed a crowd of visitors to surround him as he explained how natural corks are made. The crowd stood amid the stainless-steel tanks where wine ferments in the bowels of the winery.

"This inside piece is all ground up cork. It's molded into shape and glued," he said, adding that a "virgin" slice of cork is added to the ends so the wine isn't contaminated by glue.

Isaacson also talked about how to detect subtle scents in various wines, such as butter, cherry, oak and chocolate.

"The olfactory nerves are the most sensitive and the closest to the brain," said Isaacson, of Leelanau County.

Around the corner and among stacks of oak barrels, P.J. Havel munched a local apple dunked in caramel at the festival's picnic.

"It's wonderful," she said. "Crisp."

Her husband, Bernie, said they weren't tasting wine on Saturday, but had bottles and bottles already loaded in the car to take home to Lexington.

"We've got our winter stock," he said.

Daniel and Janine Wojtonek, of Clinton Township, rambled outside in the vineyard taking photographs.

"It's beautiful here — tranquil," Janine Wojtonek said.

"They tell great stories about the winery and the vineyards. That's the best part," Daniel Wojtonek said.

Chateau Chantal's Marketing Director Marie-Chantal Dalese said this is the winery's 11th annual Harvest Festival, a time to celebrate the results of a year's worth of hard work.

This summer's hot days and cool nights mean 2010 is expected to be a vintage year for local wines, she said.

"They'll be ones to watch for," Dalese said.

Visit www.wineriesofold mission.com for more information about Old Mission wineries, or www.lpwines.com for those in Leelanau County.