BERRIEN COUNTY, Mich. -- Before swirling, sniffing, and sampling of different wines, you may wonder, why does it taste this way? Taste is determined in the making of the wine itself, and where it's made.
Here in the vineyard, where dry, wet, hot, cold, cloudy, or sunny conditions can all determine the flavor of the wine.
“Everything impacts how a wine is going to be perceived. The French have a great word for this called terroir, which is essentially the impact of the below-soil conditions on the growing environment and then the above-soil conditions or our climate. That’s going to impact the success of growing a grapevine anywhere in the world.”
Tim Godfrey, Director of Wine and Viticulture at Lake Michigan College, said the weather conditions the grapes are subjected to are one of the most important things that helps determine a wine’s taste.
“If you have a much warmer climate it’s going to add a lot more sugar and it’s potentially going to lose more acidity. But the other side of that is actually where it’s more interesting and applies to what we do here. We’re in a much cooler climate, so we have, we retain a lot of natural acidity. And because temperatures are cooler here, we actually are able to retain our very delicate aromatics so when it’s very warm it almost kind of ripens all those delicate aromatics out and you get a wine that’s a little more, little more fleshy and full and not as nuanced.”
Godfrey says while temperatures are an important driver of a grape's flavor, after the grapes reach the halfway point of ripening, also known as veraison, drought conditions are good for viticulturists.
"At that point we want a decent amount of heat, with limited rain. That’s going to create just a little bit of stress in our vines which is going to help us from a winemaking perspective cause the vine’s going to create naturally more flavor, aroma, and compounds that relate to the mouthfeel, tannins etc.”
While Southwest Michigan isn’t as known as a Napa or Sonoma Valley just yet, Godfrey says there’s one trick up our sleeve that those other regions just don’t have.
“You can grow grapes and make wine in a lot of areas in the Midwest but not a lot of them can do quite to our level of quality because we’ve got that massive body of water to our west in Lake Michigan. It has a huge climate moderating affect in that, kind of everything grows here and that’s really what our superpower is in terms of Michigan wine, is we’ve got diversity.”
Last year, ABC57 Meteorologist Dave Caulfield spoke to Godfrey about the 2024 grape harvest, or vintage, and how the weather would affect the flavor. He said, “We could potentially see higher sugar, more flavor development, and it can make for a really great vintage”
So, was he right?
“We had sugar levels that were much higher than we normally see that does drive our alcohol a little higher, but also, especially in our reds can make them more intense and I think we made some very very intense reds here in Southwest Michigan, Michiana last year because of some of those conditions.”
Thanks to a similar set of weather conditions, most likely the wines from these past two years are going to taste similar, it's just the fact that 2025 had more grapes which means that there is going to be more wine from Southwest Michigan.