SANILAC TOWNSHIP, (AP) -- Michigan's Thumb area may be better known for sugar beets than Chardonnay, but Steve Velloff and Connie Currie had no problem moving from downtown Chicago to Sanilac County -- to make wine.
"I don't have the handicap of being self-conscious about the Thumb, because I'm not from here," said Currie, whose Blue Water Winery and Vineyard, about four miles south of Port Sanilac, sold its first bottles of wine this year.
"We're located between Lexington and Port Sanilac, two gorgeous resort towns, with harbors full of high-end boats and with resort restaurants," she said. "We just shook our heads when we came here and saw there was no winery."
Currie, 53, who grew up in the Detroit area, and her husband, Velloff, 50, are computer-software developers who moved in 2004 to their land in Sanilac Township, less than a mile from Lake Huron.
"We like to say we put down roots -- 10,000 of them," said Currie, referring to the number of grape vines the couple planted on their 16 acres.
This summer, they began selling their first bottles of wine and opened their tasting room.
It's a 73-mile drive from Saginaw.
"We had decided to move closer to Connie's family, so it was really pretty easy to come here," Velloff said. "I was a little burned out on the hustle-bustle of Chicago. It's a great place, but you can't have dogs and stuff like that.
"You gotta keep 'em on a leash and walk 'em, whereas out here you can just let 'em out to run around."
An image of the couple's dogs, Bernie and Goldie, appears on the label of Blue Water wine bottles.
Customers still can buy several varieties of Blue Water wines, all priced at $14 per bottle. During weekends this summer, some customers came from Great Lakes Bay Region cities such as Saginaw, Velloff said.
Many also drove north from metropolitan Detroit or visited the winery while staying at their Lake Huron cottages. They didn't hesitate to buy Blue Water wines -- even by the case.
"I can't even explain how busy we've been," Currie said. "There is such a latent demand for quality here. I was surprised at the sophistication of the wine drinkers. They were very demanding."
While numerous wineries exist in the Traverse City area and in southwest Michigan, grape growers were slow to sprout up in the Thumb area, long known for crops of corn, beans, wheat and sugar beets.
In 2007, however, Dizzy Daisy Winery & Vineyard, near Bad Axe in Huron County, began selling wine.
Velloff and Currie planted their vines between Port Sanilac and Lexington, two lakeside towns boasting pubs and eateries including Smackwater Jack's restaurant in Lexington. The Lexington Music Theatre regularly hosts musical and entertainment acts such as Jeff Daniels, the Cowboy Junkies, Emo Phillips and the Second City comedy troupe.
"This area is a very underserved market," Currie said, noting two other area entrepreneurs have begun making their own wines. McCallum's Orchard & Cider Mill, about 13 miles from the Blue Water winery, plans to start selling five types of its fruit wines in 2010.
"There's no reason not to think that by 2011, there will be three wineries around here," Currie said.
Geography, Currie said, has played a part in the Blue Water vineyard's growth. Like wineries in the Leelanau Peninsula near Traverse City, the Blue Water property sits near a lake.
"We're below the ridge to our west, altitude-wise," Currie said. "We're in a bowl here that enhances our lake effect. We had a brutal winter last year, and we had very little winter kill."
Some visitors do a double-take when they come upon Lexington or Port Sanilac, and discover Blue Water winery along a gravel road in the Thumb, she said.
"About one-quarter of our visitors had never been north of Port Huron before," Currie said. "They'd say 'This place is like Mayberry RFD,' or 'This reminds me of Cabot Cove,'" from the TV show "Murder She Wrote."
Blue Water's assistant vineyard manager, Drew Cervenak, said he has seen the raised eyebrows when he mentions he works at a vineyard in Sanilac County.
"Even the people in my online (viticulture) class are surprised," said Cervenak, 30, who is studying winemaking via computer classes offered by Missouri State University.
"Everybody's surprised, actually," he said, "but they're also enthused about what's going on here."
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