Between the Old Mission and Leelanau Peninsulas, the Traverse City region is home to more than 40 different wineries, hot tourist draws in the summer and fall. But what do the colder months look like at area’s vineyards and tasting rooms?

“Obviously, everything slows down,” says McKenzie Gallagher, who owns Rove Estate on Leelanau along with her husband. “The whole town kind of slows to a crawl. But honestly, we enjoy the break and the downtime. It's an opportunity to have more one-on-one time with our customers. I always tell people who are thinking of visiting: 'Don't count Traverse City out in the wintertime.' I think the most meaningful winery visits come in the offseason. Of course, you don't have the beach weather or the fall colors at this time of year, but you're much more likely to catch a winemaker or owner in the tasting room, and get a way more involved tasting.”

While some tourists and locals might assume local wineries close their doors in the wintertime, that’s far from the case. Some do cut their hours: for instance, Leelanau’s Aurora Cellars is only open Friday and Saturday from December through April, compared to a seven-days-a-week schedule during the rest of the year. Hawthorne Vineyards on Old Mission, meanwhile, is the rare seasonal winery; this year, Hawthorne wrapped up its season at the end of November, with plans to reopen in April 2020.

For the most part, though, local wineries stay open throughout the winter – and get creative about how to draw crowds. Gallagher says wintertime is Rove’s opening to do collaborations and events with other area businesses, such as an upcoming New Year’s Eve “Whiskey & Wine” event with Traverse City Whiskey and Left Foot Charley.

The Old Mission Wine Trail targets mid-January for its “Winter Warm-Up” event, which features wine and food pairings at each of the Wine Trail’s 10 wineries for a $25 ticket price. Chateau Chantal hosts cooking classes every Saturday afternoon from February through mid-April. Both Bowers Harbor Vineyards and Brys Estate (along with Jolly Pumpkin) are part of TC Brew Bus’s “Old Mission Snowshoe Wine & Brew” tours, which run each Sunday afternoon from December 29 through March 8.

According to Megan Molloy, marketing coordinator at Chateau Grand Traverse, these events are a way for wineries to bring locals back into the fold. “We tend to see a lot more locals during the winter,” she says. “We always invite them out at this time of year, because they don't have to deal with the traffic of all the visitors.” Jenna Veiga, marketing and events manager for Mari Vinyards, concurs: “It’s the best time to come into the tasting room,” she explains. “Shorter lines and more bar space means you can spend more time with your server learning about the wines and getting the full story on the winery and production processes.”

Beyond the extra events, wintertime serves two major purposes. The first is as a “rest and recharge” period after the bustle of the summer and autumn. Where many Traverse City businesses see their peak in the summer, autumn is actually the busiest time of year for wineries, a destination for tourists or bachelorette parties throughout the fall, but also via an added boost from fall color tours and visitors interested in watching harvest in action.

“Fall, by far, is the busiest season for us, with harvest and everything going on,” Molloy says of Chateau Grand Traverse. “You basically see a steady increase in visitors each month starting in June, and it hits its peak by the end of October.”

Gallagher agrees, noting that Rove typically does triple the business on an October Saturday that it does on a July Saturday. Veiga tells The Ticker fall 2019 was Mari’s biggest yet, with lines out the door into the parking lot on many Saturday afternoons.

The other winter priority? Actual winemaking. Typically, grapes come off the vines at local wineries between September and November, depending on the type of grape, the weather conditions, and the size of the harvest. From there, wineries use the slower, colder months to focus on crafting their product.

“We're very busy in the actual winery in the winter, as this is the time of year that we've now brought in all the grapes from the fall,” Molloy says. “We're pressing the grapes; we're fermenting; we're starting to make some of those blends, coming up with what they're going to be for the next vintage; we're testing acidity to see where the wines are lining up, what kind of flavor profiles are coming through, and what we want to add or take away to create the wines we're looking for. Winter is when we really do all of that. And then a lot of the bottling has to happen in the winter and the spring as well.”

And at Chateau Chantal, winter is a time for another tradition: the harvest of grapes and creation of ice wine. 

Says Marie-Chantal Delese, "We had a rare December opportunity to harvest part of our ice wine crop. This year, we added a Cabernet Franc vineyard to our ice wine reserves, and picked 3000 pounds, yielding 70 gallons. This new ice wine will be ready by early summer. We have yet to harvest our estate white ice wine grapes and will look to January, when we normally have the deep freeze needed."

The winery will have three ice wines available at its third annual Ice Wine Festival on January 25.