Veritas Estate Winery 2023 Vintage Review

This is the first vintage for Veritas Estate Winery. We are so excited to be able to share our first wines with our guests! I was lucky to be able to purchase grapes from Arrowhead Vineyards near Baroda, MI for our first vintage. The grape vines we planted in 2023 will not produce enough grapes for wine production until 2026 at the earliest, so until then we will purchase grapes from local vineyards in the Lake Michigan Shore and Fennville AVAs.

The summer and early fall weather on the Lake Michigan Shore in 2023 created good growing conditions for white and rosé wine grapes. Chardonnay and Gewürztraminer were the first grape varieties to be picked in late September. See the tasting notes for each wine below for details on the winemaking and wine descriptions.

I also decided to make a white wine from Cabernet Franc this year. I accomplished this by picking the grapes for this wine quite early so that the skins were firm and the grapes still contained refreshing acidity. The grapes were then pressed very lightly in a basket press. I watched the pressing carefully and only kept the juice that ran clear with very little color. This meant that the wine from this juice has very little tannin and is white in color, despite the fact that the grape skins were red! The wine is floral, delicate, and refreshing.

I made two exciting rosés this vintage as well. The first is a light and fruity rosé made primarily from Blaufrankisch. This wine is dry and perfect for sipping at the beach. The second rosé was made in collaboration with our friend Gottfried Hart of Drei Hart Wines from Three Oaks, Michigan. It is a more serious rosé with great color, structure, and acidity. It has notes of pepper and spice and is made in the style of great rosés from Bandol in Southern France. See the notes below for more details!