Family opens winery in Ithaca By ROSEMARY HORVATH Sun Staff Writer
Think Ithaca. Now think an Ithaca winery.
Can't quite put it together probably.
Looking more hip every day, Ithaca's downtown Center Street business district has Gratiot County's only upscale restaurant - Kristopher's - and can now boast at having the region's only on-premise winery.
Hometown Cellars Winery is the creation of married couples Tom and Terry Hale of Emerson Township and Ken and Mindy Hale of Ithaca. Tom and Ken are brothers. Winemaster is Ken and Mindy's son Aaron.
Looking like a microcosm of a winery found at Old Mission or Grand Traverse Bay, Hometown Cellars is nestled among the Village Shops inside a large brick building remodeled to reflect shops on a gaslight street.
"Wineries don't always have vineyards," Tom says as he begins a tour of the main floor retail shop, wine-tasting room and area where customers are free to discover their own winemaking abilities.
Downstairs is a fermentation room. A dumbwaiter is used to transport supplies between the two floors.
Hometown Cellars is a licensed winery and has to follow the same laws as any traditional winery with a vineyard, Tom says.
"We're a full-fledge winery like in Traverse City except we don't have a vineyard.
"Everything works the same way. It's just our wines are more personal and precise and we only sell what wines we make. We feel we have as good a wine if not better."
The retail portion of Hometown Cellars has 30 varieties of wines manufactured and bottled by the Hales. Each wine has a unique name to distinguish its type. For example, Rancher's Reserve is a red wine like a Woodbridge Cabernet Sauvignon. Valley's Best is another red like a Napa Valley Stag's Leap District Merlot.
The merlot name cannot be used unless the merlot grape is from the Hales' vineyards and they are licensed to use the name. A riesling is the same.
Customers can get a free sampling of six different wines. Or they can buy a glass or a bottle to drink on the premises.
"Or we can show them how to make a batch of wine," Tom said. "They can make their own wine here. A batch is six gallons of wine, which makes 30 bottles. Buy it by the batch and save almost half what it'd cost to buy per bottle on the shelf."
Toast a special event with your own label. Hometown Cellars can provide a variety of bottles to choose from and labeling equipment. There's about three glasses to a bottle.
"People can personalize their taste by using our equipment," Tom said. Cost for bottling a batch depends on variety. Little Italy that is like an Italian Montepulciano runs around $177. A high-end Crushendo is more than $200.
Winemaking at home got easier in the 1970s when kits began to be sold commercially. The kits came out about the same time as there was a craze to make beer at home from kits.
Wine kits have been greatly improved.
Promotional agent David Creighton with the Michigan Grape and Wine Council doesn't deal with on-site winemaking stores. The council is an arm of the Department of Agriculture and only represents wineries using Michigan grapes.
But Creighton did acknowledge that on-premise shops are gaining in popularity and popping up around the state. Some are well established in other parts of the country. Many of them are franchises.
Michigan has one of the largest on-premise winemaking franchises. Vintner's Cellar Franchising International in Burton has shops in Saline, Marquette and Kalamazoo, for example.
Few, though, are able to serve wine on premises like Hometown Cellars. Hometown Cellars isn't a franchise, but Winexpert Inc. is the supplier. Based in British Columbia, Winexpert is owned by the Canadian winery Andres Wines Ltd. It's the largest manufacturer of premium wine, beer and other alcohol beverage kits.
"Winexpert Inc. puts the juice in a kit for us, which may come from California, Australia and other places around the world," Tom says. "They buy the juice from a winery and blend it to specifications that they have. Wine experts formulate the way they want this wine to come out."
Tom said the majority of juices at Hometown Cellars are Canadian based. They also have some domestic wines.
Tom Hale first got a taste of homemade wines more than six years ago. He's a salesman at Martin Chrysler in Alma and received a bottle from a customer. He started to experiment himself. He and friends ordered kits through catalogues and before long, they were having wine-tasting parties among family and friends.
On-premise winemaking shops are more prevalent across Canada. The Hales frequented Canadian venues over the years.
Mindy works at Commercial Bank and heads up the accounting end at the shop. Terry and Aaron pretty much manage the store during the week. The couples get together on weekends to manufacture the wines. Ken works road construction during the building season.
Separate from his family, Aaron, 27, got into winemaking while living in the Upper Peninsula while attending Michigan Technological University. He had planned a career as a research chemist after majoring in organic chemistry, but changed his plans when he was invited to join the family business.
An amateur winemaker, Aaron specializes in meads and honey wines. "I like refining a drink until it's wonderful and delicious," he said. "A mead is a honey wine with a taste similar to a white wine. It can be sweet like a dessert white but not syrupy."
Meads, once the elixir of royalty, don't taste like raw honey. Aaron said the honey is diluted in a water mixture. Different honeys from different places yield different flavors. Mead from a wildflower honey tastes different from a mead made from buckwheat honey.
Hometown Cellars produces meads made with honey from an apiary in Carson City.
Aaron also produces cysers. This is a cross between a mead and cider. The cider comes from Uncle John's Cider Mill in St. John's.
Tom and Ken's background in crop and livestock farming has helped them to understand the fermentation process. They hope to continue coming up with different specialty wines.
"It's what keeps this business interesting," Tom said.
