Ann and Phil Mahan always dreamed of owning a vineyard and being winemakers, and in 2022, their … [+]
After watching the Dennis Quaid version of The Parent Trap too many times with their children, Ann and Phil Mahan started dreaming of owning their own vineyard.
“I don’t know that Phil watched the movie as often as I did,” admits Ann.
It wasn’t until the Chicago area couple took a trip through Austrian wine country that inspired them to start their own winery and speakeasy, Mahan Family Wines. Phil started taking winemaking classes from the University of California-Davis, and the couple started looking for land on which to plant a vineyard.
Since the land in and around Chicago isn’t conducive to grape growing, they looked in Harbor Country, Michigan, which is just on the other side of Lake Michigan, but only 16 exits into the state of Michigan. “This area just started planting vinifera grapes about 30 years ago, and it’s causing a revolution in wine culture,” Ann says.
This land also has all the deposits the glaciers left behind, and it has a perfect microclimate for growing grapes. Years ago, the grapes grown in that region were all for grape juice, but it’s been slowly transforming to a winemaking region of note.
“I’m a fourth-generation in a farming family,” says Phil, who grew up on a farm in Indiana. “The farming part didn’t scare me.”
Finding the right piece of land that they could afford was definitely a challenge. The couple spent several weekends in a row, driving around Harbor Country, located in the southwest corner of Michigan, looking for the right spot. “We were driving around and calling on everything, but we couldn’t find anything,” Phil says.
Then they drove down a little road, and they happened to be right there when a realtor was putting a sign out on a three and a half acres “of weeds.” That was a Sunday, and by the following Wednesday, they had closed on the land. That was in 2016, and after clearing the weeds, they planted their first vines in their vineyard, which they named Granite Ridge.
“We just knew it was a dream that we had parked for 20 years,” Ann says. “We had to do a full immersion in this dream, and we had to figure it out. If you have passion for a project, you need to let that passion carry you through, otherwise it just might fizzle out.”
Their first official harvest was in 2020, as the 2019 harvest was blown out by the polar vortex. That harvest they sold to a large winemaker, and they determined that if they were to carve out a second career at being a vintners, they would have to make their own wines. So, Ann left her corporate job while Phil continued his work as a historic restoration consultant, and in 2021, they started holding focus groups in the historic farmhouse in Bloomingdale, Illinois, which was to become their speakeasy. They opened the doors to their speakeasy Valentine’s Day weekend in 2022.
Mahan Family Wines has won several winemaking awards since its debut in 2022.
Their speakeasy is open at least once a month during the growing season, but as the days grow colder, after their harvest, they are open more frequently in winter months. They also do numerous pop-up events.
In their tiny vineyard, they grow Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Gruner Veltliner grapes from which they make wines, but they also buy grapes from other growers in Michigan. Their wines have won several awards, especially their Granite Ridge Chardonnay and their Granite Ridge Chambourcin. They have a wine club, and they ship their wines to 22 states, with more states getting added as interest in their microwinery grows.
They have a vineyard manager who keeps an eye on the grapes when they aren’t there, and now, Phil also mentors apprentice winemakers. This fall, they’re also hosting an amateur winemaking competition. “I believe in educating future winemakers,” Phil says.
“We really bootstrapped this together, and when we purchased the land, it didn’t have any electricity or running water,” Ann says. “We’re really trying to change the perception of what southwest Michigan wine can be.”