The Winter Wine Trail: Traverse City Wineries in the Off-Season

Everyone comes to Traverse City in July. The bay is warm, the tasting rooms are buzzing, the patios are packed with weekend visitors from Detroit and Chicago, and the wine — fresh, fruit-forward, golden in the afternoon light — tastes like summer itself. It's genuinely spectacular. It is also, for a certain kind of traveler, not the best time to visit.

The best time, if you want our honest opinion, is January through March.

That's not contrarianism. The case for winter wine touring in northern Michigan is real and compelling: no lines at tasting rooms, unhurried conversations with winemakers who actually have time to talk, snow-covered vineyard landscapes that are frankly more beautiful than anything July has to offer, and the one thing you absolutely cannot experience in any other season — ice wine, fresh from the vine, in the very place where it was made.

This guide is for the traveler willing to pack a good coat and drive north when everyone else has stayed home. You won't regret it.

There's something about tasting a wine in the landscape where it was grown — in the cold and the quiet, with snow on the vines outside the window — that makes the wine taste like something more than wine. It tastes like a place.

Why Winter Is Actually a Great Time to Visit

The conventional wisdom about wine touring in cold climates is that you visit in summer, when everything is open and the scenery is at its most photogenic. This wisdom is not wrong — but it ignores some genuine advantages that winter offers.

You get the winemakers, not the pour staff. In July, the busiest Traverse City tasting rooms are staffed by a rotating team of trained hospitality workers who can answer your questions but may not have made the wine. In January, you are frequently poured by the winemaker themselves, or by the owner, or by the vineyard manager who walked the rows where this Riesling was grown. The conversation that unfolds over a glass of estate Pinot Noir during a quiet Tuesday in February is categorically different from what you get on a Saturday afternoon in peak season.

The views are extraordinary. Snow-covered vineyard rows sloping down to a frozen or deeply blue bay, bare vines traced with ice, the low winter sun cutting sideways through the tasting room windows — this is genuinely beautiful in a way that summer greenery sometimes isn't. Several Traverse City wineries have floor-to-ceiling windows specifically designed to take advantage of the winter landscape.

Prices and availability improve dramatically. Many wineries offer winter tasting fees at reduced rates, bottle discounts, and case deals that aren't available during peak season. Hotels in Traverse City drop to a fraction of their summer rates. Restaurants that are booked solid in July have tables available.

Ice wine. More on this below, but the short version: the rarest and most expensive wine made in this region is produced only in winter, only when temperatures fall below 17°F, and can only be tasted in the tasting rooms that made it. This alone is worth a winter trip.

Ice Wine: The Reason to Visit in January

Ice wine — Eiswein in German, the tradition from which Michigan's version descends — is made from grapes that are left on the vine long after the normal harvest, through the first hard freezes of autumn and into the deep cold of winter. When temperatures drop below 17°F (-8°C), the water inside the grapes freezes while the sugar and flavor compounds remain liquid. The frozen grapes are harvested by hand, usually in the pre-dawn hours when temperatures are at their lowest, and pressed immediately. The result is an intensely concentrated juice — perhaps a tenth the volume of a normal pressing — that ferments into a wine of extraordinary sweetness, complexity, and balancing acidity.

True ice wine is expensive to produce and labor-intensive to make. The yields are tiny — a single vine might produce only a few ounces of ice wine — and the harvest window is unpredictable and narrow. Some years the temperatures don't cooperate and no ice wine is made at all. When it does happen, the wine that results is among the most remarkable things you can put in a glass.

Chateau Grand Traverse is the region's pioneer in ice wine production, having made their first vintage in 1983. Their Johannisberg Riesling Ice Wine — when available — is a gold-colored, honeyed, intensely aromatic wine with notes of apricot, orange blossom, and tropical fruit, balanced by the grape's characteristic steely acidity. It is extraordinary. A 375ml bottle costs $50–80 at the winery and significantly more if you find it at retail.

Chateau Chantal also produces ice wine in suitable vintages, as does Peninsula Cellars. If you're visiting in January or February, call ahead to ask whether ice wine was made that vintage and whether it's available for tasting. The answer, when it's yes, is worth the trip north by itself.

Which Wineries Are Open in Winter?

This is the practical question, and it requires some planning. Not all Traverse City wineries stay open year-round, and those that do often operate on reduced winter hours — typically Friday through Sunday, sometimes Thursday through Sunday. Calling ahead or checking websites before you visit is essential in winter in a way it isn't in July.

That said, a core group of wineries on both peninsulas maintain winter hours reliably, and these alone constitute a serious wine touring experience.

A Perfect Winter Wine Weekend Itinerary

Two days is the ideal length for a winter wine weekend in Traverse City. Here's a suggested itinerary built around the most reliably open winter tasting rooms and the best non-wine experiences that complement them.

What to Wear and Practical Logistics

Northern Michigan winters are real winters. January temperatures average in the low 20s°F with frequent lake-effect snow from Lake Michigan. The peninsulas themselves get slightly less snow than the mainland thanks to the moderating effect of Grand Traverse Bay, but the roads can be icy and the temperatures genuinely cold. Plan accordingly.

For clothing: dress in proper winter layers. Good waterproof boots are non-negotiable if there's snow on the ground — the parking lots at rural wineries are not always cleared to pavement. A warm coat, gloves, and a hat are obvious. The tasting rooms themselves are warm and sometimes quite cozy, so layering allows you to shed appropriately once inside.

For driving: the peninsula roads are maintained and generally passable in normal winter conditions, but if a significant snowstorm is forecast, adjust your plans. The scenery is beautiful in snow, but not if you're sliding into a ditch. A four-wheel-drive or all-wheel-drive vehicle is helpful, and having good winter tires makes a meaningful difference. Always check road conditions before heading out on the peninsulas after a storm.

Beyond the Tasting Rooms: Winter Activities Near Traverse City

A winter wine weekend in Traverse City works best when you weave in other cold-weather activities between tasting room visits. The region is not a one-note summer destination — there's genuinely good stuff to do in the snow.

Cross-country skiing at Sleeping Bear Dunes. The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore — one of the most dramatic landscapes in the Midwest — maintains groomed cross-country ski trails through winter. Skiing through the dune forests with Lake Michigan visible through the trees, then warming up at a Leelanau winery afterward, is an exceptional winter day.

Downhill skiing at Crystal Mountain. About 45 minutes south of Traverse City, Crystal Mountain is a full ski resort with downhill runs, Nordic trails, and a spa. Pairing a morning of skiing with an afternoon of wine tasting is a combination that takes some planning but rewards the effort considerably.

Downtown Traverse City. The city's downtown Front Street stays lively year-round with good restaurants, independent shops, and the Traverse City Film Festival (January) and other winter events. Several excellent wine bars serve Traverse City wines by the glass — a good option for evenings when you want to keep tasting without driving.

Ice fishing on the bay. For a quintessentially northern Michigan experience, ice fishing on Grand Traverse Bay when it freezes — surrounded by the same landscape that produces the wines you've been tasting — is hard to beat as a way to feel the full depth of the place.

The Traverse City wine region in winter is a different place than the Traverse City wine region in summer — quieter, more intimate, more honest about what it is. The wines taste the same, but the experience of tasting them feels more real somehow, more connected to the cold landscape and the long growing season and the strange, unlikely fact that world-class wine grows here at the 45th parallel in northern Michigan. Come in summer if you must. Come in winter if you can.