Black Star Farms – blackstar

Up on the Farm – June 6th

On tap this weekend â the Leland Wine and Food Fest under the tent in Historic Fishtown. This is one of this area’s premier events â the official start to the Leelanau Peninsula summer â the place to see and be seen, sip a little local wine, taste the local fare, enjoy the music, and kick off the summer season. Weâll be there, as will Anne with her Leelanau Cheese Co. tastes, so stop by on Saturday from 12 to 6 and say hi. If you find a wine youâd love to take home and canât wait to get to our Tasting Room on Sunday (open noon-5) just head over to the Village Cheese Shanty or the Merc. Both have a good supply of our wines and Anneâs cheese. Or, better yet, bring your wine fest glass to our Tasting Room on Sunday (June 10^th) weâll give you 10% off on your wine purchases.

Weâre booked at the Inn this weekend, but have rooms available all next week (June 10-17) including the weekend. This doesnât happen often. Itâs the perfect time to visit. Give Jill or Kelly a call at 231.944.1251.

Lee and the crew hung bottles last week in the nearby Mikowski orchard for our Pear and its Spirit, our pear-in-the-bottle brandy. Thatâs Ray getting ready to tie a bottle to a branch for support. The neck of the bottle must point down to keep the rain out. With any luck in September weâll have 400 good, usable pears from the 600 bottles hung.

Last weekâs warm weather and this weekâs rain have made the grapevines pop. Workers tied the new shoots to the first wires last week in the vineyard.

Our petting zoo is open. The momma goats have returned and are expecting any time late in June. Popcorn is the newest kid and joined Cinnamon and Nutmeg. Lambs, llamas, pot-bellied pigs and miniature horses round out the menagerie. Baby bunnies are ready for new homes â and we have a whole new batch of kittens thatâll be looking for homes in a few weeks. Let Diane know if youâre interested â dainek@blackstarfarms.com.

The sheep shearer was in last week to give the lambs their summer clip. It was so much fun to watch that weâre making it a spring event next year. Weâll let you know when. During the course of shearing we discovered that âFlowerâ our little black sheep is actually a boy! Big OOPS there. Weâre looking for a new manlier name for him.

Nic has been busy with more planting of vegetables. He reports that there are still places available for our inaugural CSA. You can find a sign-up sheet on this website and enjoy fresh produce weekly or bi-weekly all summer. Work is moving along on our farmers market with an end-of-June opening day soon to be announced.

Leelanau Cheese Co. is featured in the newly published The Atlas of American Artisan Cheese by Jeffrey P. Roberts. Anne and John are the only producers of traditionally made Raclette in the US, and they have the medals to prove just how good their cheese is. They make about 21,000 pounds of Raclette yearly which sounds like a lot, but itâs only distributed in our local area, and tripling production would still not be enough to satisfy their customers.

We hope to see you soon, up on the Farm

By blackstar|June 6th, 2007|Featured|0 Comments

BlackStarFarms.com tapped as a top-10 Michigan web site!

The Midwest Business and Technology News has named the Black Star Farms web site as the 9th best business web site in the state of Michigan.

The publication rated web sites based upon navigation, look and feel, uniqueness, useful and fresh content, and we feel honored to be included on their list. They did suggest we do a little work on our content. Any readers have ideas for enhancing it?

Check out MidwestBusiness.comâs List of Top 10 Web Sites in Michigan.

By blackstar|June 5th, 2007|Featured|0 Comments

Leland Festival a hot ticket, Arcturos a hot label

Detroit News wine writer Sandra Silfven reminds you that the hot ticket Up North next weekend is the annual Leland Wine & Food Festival. The event is held next Saturday (June 9) and features 15 wineries, 14 food vendors and live music at Leland harbor from noon to 6 PM. Black Star Farms will be on hand – drop by and say hello!

Can’t make it north? How about the Great Lakes Great Wine Tasting, held from 6-8:30 PM next Thursday (June 7) at Oakland Community College in Farmington Hills. Sandra taps Black Star Farms’ Arcturos as a “Hot Label”.

Read Regional wines on parade in the Detroit News.

By blackstar|May 31st, 2007|Featured|0 Comments

Chairman's Award

Our Arcturos ’06 Semi-Dry Riesling has earned the Chairman’s Award – unanimous gold – at the 2007Riverside International Wine Competition. This prestigeous California competition also awarded bronze medals to Arcturos ’05 Pinot Noir and to Arcturos ’05 Pinot Gris.

By blackstar|May 17th, 2007|Winery|0 Comments

Wine touring in Northern Michigan

The Inn at Black Star farms Detroit News wine writer Sandra Silfven has a nice feature about spring and early summer wine touring in Northwest Michigan that begins:

If you’re planning a wine trip to Northwest Michigan, now is a good time to go: The inns have a few spare rooms, restaurants that close for the winter are open again; tasting rooms have longer hours; traffic is not as heavy.Here’s a preview of what’s new and what you should look for.

At Black Star Farms: The 160-acre farm/winery/luxury inn just south of Suttons Bay is always finding a new way to showcase Michigan agriculture. The latest is the conversion of one of the barns into a farmers market, opening in June, which will eventually also house a commercial food kitchen for making the inn’s jams, jellies and toppings.

The farmers market, explains managing partner Don Coe, will operate year-round and feature produce grown at Black Star and at area farms.

“It’s an opportunity to celebrate the connection between the local farm community and consumers, and demonstrate sustainable agriculture,” said Coe.

Read the rest of Northwest Michigan wineries gear up for summer travelers from the Detroit News.

By blackstar|May 10th, 2007|Farm, Featured, Inn, Winery|1 Comment

BSF Blog

Have you ever wanted to add your two cents worth about any of our news items? Well, now you can. Just click on “comments” below any article and let us know what you’re thinking. We’d love to hear from you.

By blackstar|March 29th, 2007|Featured|0 Comments

Silver Medal

Leelanau Cheese Co. has won a Silver Medal for their mild Raclette at the 2007 United States Championship Cheese Contest. The medal in the Open Class for Semi-Soft Cheeses was announced by the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association on March 14th.

By blackstar|March 29th, 2007|Creamery|0 Comments

Pinot Noir in The Wall Street Journal

They really like us! We received another mention in The Wall Street Journal on December 22nd in the weekly Tastings column by Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher. They said,

Good wines are being made all over the US now…we had a lovely Pinot Noir from Michigan a couple of weeks ago, 2004 Black Star Farms Arcturos reasonably priced at $22.50.

Unfortunately, the ’04 vintage is just about gone, but the ’05 is ready to be released, and our winemaker thinks it’s our best ever Pinot Noir.

By blackstar|December 28th, 2006|Featured, Tasting, Winery|0 Comments

'04 Ice Wine Available

Twelve intrepid souls braved bitter cold in 2004 to pick the Riesling grapes that had been left on their vines in hopes of the right conditions to make ice wine. The temperatures had remained below freezing for a few days, so December 19th’s 8 degree morning was deemed to be the time to pick.

Covered in a half-foot of snow, Old Mission Peninsula’s Leorie Vineyard was the spot, and the picking began at sun-up, about 8am. Despite the chilly temperatures, the sun was shining and the wind wasn’t too strong making this year’s picking a “relatively pleasant” experience.

The vines had been covered in netting to discourage the birds, and, once it was cut away, all the leaves and some of the grape clusters fell into the snow, thus making the hunt for fallen clusters part of the ritual. Every grape counts when each only gives up about one drop of juice. Picking took about four hours. The bins of grapes were rushed back to Black Star Farms for the outdoor crushing to begin; the frozen grapes are not allowed to thaw. Juice coming off the press was at about 55 brix – a measure of sweetness – about two and a half times the normal brix for table wines.

Local photographer, David Fox, was on hand to capture the day’s events for posterity. Go to David’s web site to see just what happened on that frigid day.

Exceedingly slow fermentation finally finished, and the 2004 Ice Wine was bottled in February and just released in November. The residual sugar is a staggering 40%, while alcohol is at 7%. Come on in to the Tasting Room for some of our latest “liquid gold.”

By blackstar|December 27th, 2006|Winery|0 Comments

Wall Street Journal Touts Hard Apple Cider

If you’re looking for “far and away the best cider out of more than a dozen I tried,” heed Eric Felten’s word in the Wall Street Journal on October 7th, and look no farther. In his “How’s Your Drink” column he rated our Hard Apple Cider “a revelation. Like the first bite of a perfectly ripe apple straight from the tree, the taste was clean and fresh, not sugary or syrupy. And then, unlike any other cider I tried, that beautiful, uncluttered apple taste lingered, fading slowly and gently. Without trying to impersonate wine, the Black Star Farms cider was the only one that achieved that key characteristic of good vino-the long finish.”
He rated our cider “Very Good,” and his tasting notes read, “Clean, focused, fresh apple taste with a long, lingering finish. Without aping champagne, this cider succeeds as a delightful alternative.”

By blackstar|October 9th, 2006|Featured, Tasting, Winery|0 Comments

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