BARK RIVER, Mich. (WZMQ) – It’s harvest time for Northern Sun Winery in Bark River.
For the last few Saturdays, the vineyard has been filled with harvesters.
“Today, you caught us in the middle of an awesome harvest,” said Wendy Middaugh, who owns the winery with her wife, Melissa. “We’ve just got a bumper crop. We pick about five ton every Saturday for about a six-week period, so we’ll probably end up with about 30 ton of grapes.”
Middaugh says picking that many grapes takes a village. This village is made up of volunteers.
“The group this year is a lot of fun because it’s people that have come through and said, ‘Hey, when are you picking grapes?’ and then they’ve kind of hung out to know when,” she said. “Some people come every week, but others just come as they can and help us get all these grapes in.”
Although it is hard work, everyone has a great time.
“In the vine, you can talk about anything,” Middaugh laughed. “If you’ve ever ‘heard it from the grapevine,’ that’s really true. You get out there and you get all relaxed, and you’re just talking to whoever’s on the other side!”
After they’re picked, the grapes are taken for processing.
“This is definitely where the magic happens,” said Middaugh’s son Jonathan Bovard, who serves as vintner. “We do our final little quality inspection before we run them through the crusher and de-stemmer. We’re running Marquette today. This will make good red wine.”
The crushed grapes sit in plasic tubs for one week to ferment.
“I’ll run them through the press and put it down into the stainless steel tanks in the cellar, and they’ll be down there until next year,” Bovard explained.
By the end of the harvest season, the tanks will nearly be overflowing.
“We usually do about 15,000 bottles,” said Middaugh. “We have wholesalers in local markets that sell them, but 75% of our wine is sold out of our beautiful little château.”
After roughly another year, patrons will see the bottles being made now on shelves. For now, Middaugh says Northern Sun Winery is enjoying these weeks in the vineyard with the volunteers.
“It’s just magical,” she said. “It’s something my wife and I have done all over the world, community development. It’s really cool, the togetherness. I don’t know what we’d do if we didn’t have harvests like this. We look forward to it every year.”
Northern Sun Winery has a few more Saturdays of harvesting this season. To see when harvesting is being done, follow Northern Sun Winery on Facebook, visit northernsunwinery.com, or call (906) 399-9212.
Northern Sun Winery is located at 983 10th Road.
