Westview Orchards & Winery is a cornucopia of delights!
The Washington-based you-pick farm, cider mill, and winery began in 1813. For over 200 years, it’s been owned and operated by the same family. That’s an impressive legacy!
Most of Westview’s offerings – including its you-pick produce, market, and Farm Fun playground and activities for kids – won’t open until spring or early summer. But its winery is reopening tomorrow, February 24! And as I learned in October, the Westview Winery is worth checking out.
I was at Westview one chilly October morning to run in a Halloween-themed 5K race. It was the kind of race that gave out shirts that said, “Witch way to the wine?” So you might expect the course to be a cruise. But this course was not beginner-level. It wound up- and downhill along fields of grapevines and orchards. And this trail was crowded – with mostly walkers, so much so that I ended up running along the rocky, grassy side of the trail to bypass them (a move I would not recommend). But the views along the trail were gorgeous! And the race reminded me that there’s nothing quite like that exhausted yet exhilarated feeling I get when I, as a non-runner, successfully slow-jog my way through three miles. Unless it’s swilling a glass of red wine at 9:45 in the morning after completing said slow-jog.
Wine had initially sounded unappealing after all that exertion. But once I got to sipping, it tasted pretty darn good! That’s to the credit of Westview’s winemakers. I got to sample more of their wares at the onsite wine bar. A friend had earned five free bottles of Westview’s wine by assembling a team of 20 runners! A generous soul, she opened some of them to share with the group. While I can’t remember the names of the wines I tried that day, I do remember that they were delicious!
The winery’s wares include a variety of both sweet and dry wines, plus hard ciders made from the orchard’s apples. The dry wines include a Gewürztraminer named Wine der Woman and a semi-sweet merlot blended with cranberries aptly named Cranberry Crush.
Participating in the race also earned me one of Westview’s delectably fresh donuts. Is there anything better than cider mill donuts?
While we’ll have to wait for those delectably fresh donuts to come back into season, we can daydream about them in Westview’s wine bar. Located on the second floor of a barn, it’s cute and cozy, sparkling with twinkle lights, the tables bedecked with pumpkins and sunflowers on the day of my visit. And this March, we can attend two classes at Westview: one on spring-wreath-making, the other, charcuterie-board-assembling. Even in the off-season, there’s plenty to do at Westview!
65075 Van Dyke Rd.
Washington, MI 48095
Sawmill Creek Farms, I’m so happy to have been introduced to you!!!
On December 10, I visited the tiny, cutesy-nostalgic Parks and Rec Diner in downtown Detroit, but I wasn’t there to scarf down some biscuits and gravy or some of its other scrumptious-sounding breakfast fare. I was there for a very special dinner – a pop-up dinner to benefit an awesome local farm, Melo Farms! It is a Yale-based pig farm run by a husband-and-wife team who raises a heirloom breed one hundred percent the humane way: truly free-range, organic, grass-fed, and treated with compassion. Melo Farms has been holding monthly pop-up dinners hosted by different chefs and at different venues in the Detroit area to help raise money for a new tractor. December’s dinner was crafted by the young and talented Chef Larissa Pope, who had us dining on five courses featuring various components of Melo Farms’ pork, including:
100 Places in the D 