Ciccone Vineyard
& Winery
Date Visited: November 9, 2019
Stop: #68
This was the first “official” day of the Toast of the Season wine tour through the Leelanau Peninsula. It would only make sense to describe what this all entails before I get into each of our winery visits. We bought two tickets a couple of months ahead of the event which gave us access to the 25 wineries on the Leelanau Peninsula participating in the wine tour. You pick one winery to be your start point, and at 11:00 am on Saturday, you check-in at your start point and are given a gift bag that contains a wine tumbler and a few other small gifts – a bag of chips, discount tickets, etc. Then, you get your small food sample and a sample of the featured wine paired with the food. After enjoying the food and wine, most wineries will also include a couple additional pours of their wines - your choice (anywhere from 2 to 5 additional wine samples). At that point, we typically buy some wine and then head on to our next destination. At this point, you can go to any winery you want in any order. Since our objective is to hit as many wineries as possible, we do not linger for long around any one winery. This trip is not about the quality of our visit more than it is about the quantity of wineries we can visit and explore where we want to return. Kathy and Christie meticulously map out the most efficient routes that allow us to maximize our winery visits. The event covers two days – 11 am to 5 pm on Saturday, 12 noon to 5 pm on Sunday. We have yet to visit every winery on the list, but we usually hit 23-25 over the two days, so the challenge is always to outdo the year before.
Our starting point for this weekend was Willow
Vineyards. However, we found out the
morning of the event that, due to the horrible weather from the day and night
before, Willow Vineyards would not be open for the weekend. Ice buildup made entry into their parking lot
impossible to navigate. So, we were
redirected to Ciccone Vineyard and Winery, which was just a short distance up
the road. Ciccone Vineyard and Winery
sits atop a hill on East Hilltop Road with a beautiful view of the surrounding
area, including the west arm of the Grand Traverse Bay. Since the number of people now using Ciccone
as their starting point was doubled, there was already quite a crowd when we
arrived. We got in line, received our
gift bag, our featured wine, and headed back to the west room for our food
pairing.
If the name Ciccone sounds familiar, then you may have
already figured out that the owners of this vineyard and winery are the father
(Silvio “Tony”) and mother (Joan) of Madonna (one of 8 children raised by Tony
and Joan). The winery holds a special
place in our hearts not only because of the great wines we’ve had there, but
also the family’s connection to Rochester Hills. In fact, some of the kids went to the same high school
as one of our friends (and years later, our own kids).
When Tony retired as an optical engineer, and Joan sold her
business, the two headed north with hopes of fulfilling their dream of owning a
vineyard and winery. Tony, being a first
generation American from Italy, had grown up making and drinking homemade
wine. In 1995, they acquired their
current land and the Ciccone Vineyard and Winery was established. The following Spring, the first five acres
were planted by hand with Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, and
Gewürztraminer.
Tony and Joan have passed on the Ciccone tradition of
making wine to their son, Mario, and their daughter, Paula. Mario is the vineyard manager, making sure
the grapevines are tended to and thrive, and Paula is the winemaker – one of
only two female winemakers in Leelanau County.
Between the two of them, they have grown and produced many award-winning
wines.
During prior “Toast the Season” events, we’ve enjoyed the opportunity
to have a brief conversation with Joan as she personally helped serve. Being
able to meet an owner and hear a bit of their story transforms a visit from a
couple of sips of wine to a special occasion.
For our pairing today, we enjoyed a Chocolate Dessert from the Great
Lakes Chocolate Company paired with the 2018 Grazie (a fruited vinifera). It was a very good pairing, but we did miss Joan’s
delectable Italian cuisine (she has the most amazing meatballs!) and
conversations she always shared with us and her patrons.
Once we finished our pairing, we headed back into the main
tasting room. I really love this room –
a very sturdy oak bar topped with large wood posts and a pergola, matching wood
posts and beams supporting the vaulted ceiling, a stone fireplace with leather
couch fronting it, an ornate metal cross hanging over the massive wood mantle
to the fireplace, old wine barrels serving as tables, and just an overall cozy
feeling on a very cold winter day.
However, the warmth in that room was probably due to the huge number of
people gathered in it and not from the fire in the fireplace. We had to wait a bit to move our way up to
the bar. On this day, the winery offered
two additional free samples. In short
order, we chose the following:
Kathy’s selections:
1. 2018 Rosé
2. 2017 Dolcetto – A
varietal from Northern Italy.
John’s selections:
1. 2017
Pacentro – Off-dry blend of Pinot Blanc and Golden
Muscat.
2. 2018 Sweet
Caroline – Concentrated sweet Chardonnay.
We enjoyed our samples – I was partial to the Sweet
Caroline and Kathy favored the Dolcetto.
But, we had agreed that, due to the large quantity of wine we already
had at home, that we would not go crazy this year buying up cases of wine. Since we had limited samples to try, we
decided not to buy anything this year from Ciccone. In hindsight, I wish we had since the
pandemic made a return trip to Ciccone in 2020 an impossibility and we have
since depleted our inventory of Ciccone wines. We missed the ticket sales for Toast the Season this year, so we're going to have to look for another opportunity next year!
For REFERENCE, the following is the wine selection
currently at Ciccone (as of October 13, 2021):
Estate Bottled White Wine
2019 Pinot Grigio
2020 Riesling
2020
Chardonnay
2019
Gerwurztraminer
2018
Nectar (blend of Pinot
Grigio and Chardonnay)
2020
Pacentro (Off-dry Blend of
Pinot Blanc and Golden Muscat)
2019
Sweet Caroline (Concentrated Sweet
Chardonnay)
Estate Bottled Red Wine
2020 Pinot Noir
2019 Cabernet Franc
2020 Novanto Dolcetto (Celebrating Tony's
90th Birthday, Novanto (90 in Italian) is dry, tannic, and wonderfully smooth)
2019 Ridge Red
2020 Tramonto Red (Unique blend of our
signature Dolcetto, and four different French Hybrids. Off-dry)
2020 Lee La Tage (Bordeaux Blend Cab
Franc, Cab Sav, Merlot & Malbec)
2020 Dolcetto (Varietal from Northern Italy)
Estate Bottled Rosé & Blush Wines
2020 Blush
2019 Rosé De Pinot Noir
Soirée (A classic Champagne blend of
Chardonnay and Pinot Noir)
2020 Romato
2020 Frankie (Ice Style Wine made from
Cabernet Franc Grapes)
Specialty Wine
Grazie (Pinot Noir, Cherry and Apple)
2017
Starboard (Port-style wine.
Fortified blend of Chardonnay, Balaton Cherries, and peach)
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