On Saturday night, I was rummaging through the cellar in search of a bottle for the evening and came across this bottle of Blueberry wine from Leelanau Cellars. I had picked this up on a spur of the moment last January at one of the Meijer stores in Ann Arbor, MI while it was on sale. My original attraction was to use it as part of my reverse engineering of commercial blueberry wines to help improve the design of my own blueberry wine recipes. That had obviously gotten side tracked by the move to Massachusetts, so I decided to pop it open and see what I thought. I had a sneaking suspicion that it was a sweet wine, so I chilled it before opening. A quick test with an Accuvin residual sugar test confirmed that it was sweet--at least 2% residual sugar.Leelanau Cellars Blueberry
Country of origin: USA
Appellation: Michigan
Cost: $4 at Miejer in Ann Arbor, MI
Stats: 100% blueberry, 12% ABV, 2% residual sugar
Appearance: Light red, clear and transparent
Aroma: Blueberries and citrus
Taste: Weak and insipid. Light blueberry taste is overwhelmed by the cloyingly sweetness.
My wife and I each took one sip and dumped the rest down the drain. Leelanau Cellars' motto is "A Taste of Northern Michigan". One of Michigan's oldest wineries and perched about half-way up the Leelanau Penninsula north of Traverse City, they should have first hand knowledge. However, from personal experience, I can honestly say that Northern Michigan can taste a LOT better than this. Please don't judge Michigan wines in general or blueberry wines in particular by this product. Blueberry wines can be made in a wide variety of styles, but this is just too overwhelmingly sweet to appreciate any of the blueberry character.
Sadly Saluted,
a Wine Student
