Cherries, Wine, and What Comes Next — a stop on M-22.
More orchards through here, and it's worth knowing this isn't a museum — it's a working, changing, and genuinely precarious industry.
Tart cherries are the heart of it. Michigan grows the large majority of the tart cherries in the United States, and most of them come off within a couple of weeks in July, shaken from the tree by a machine that grips the trunk and vibrates the fruit into a catching frame — it takes seconds per tree and it's oddly wonderful to watch.
But that lake-moderated spring is a knife-edge. A warm March that wakes the buds early, followed by one hard April frost, can take most of a year's crop in a night. That's happened more than once in recent memory, and the whole region feels it.
Which is part of why you're seeing more grapevines every year. The same climate that suits cherries suits cool-climate wine — Riesling, Pinot Gris, sparkling — and northern Michigan has quietly become a serious wine region. There are dozens of tasting rooms on the peninsulas ahead.
If you pass a farm market today, stop. Dried cherries, cherry preserves, cider in autumn. And a tip locals will give you: buy the seconds. The fruit that's too small or oddly shaped for the grocery chain is the same fruit, half the price, and it's what everyone up here actually buys.