bottle #3 & #4: Round Barn Winery & Free Run Cellars, Saugatuck MI

Our first trip up to Saugatuck, one of Michigan's premier tourist destinations, led us approximately an hour north west of Kalamazoo on the shore of Lake Michigan. On our way there on the outskirts of Saugatuck, we spotted a huge antique store. Since Chris was driving, he pulled the car in and we perused through shelves and shelves of old trinkets and ancient dishes, books, records, anything you can think of. Our treasures, depends who you ask. After this detour, we rolled into downtown Saugatuck and parked on a nearby side street to the lovely downtown. All four "wineries" we visited on this particular day in Saugatuck were actually just tasting rooms, they weren't the actual vineyard. This has it's advantages, mostly being that we could hit four wineries in the matter of minutes (well, a little longer than that, but quite quickly). The disadvantages, however, are that we lacked the real experience of seeing the grapes, meeting the winemaker, and getting a feel for the vineyard itself. However, our first stop was a combined tasting room for both Round Barn Winery from Baroda, MI, and Free Run Cellars from Berrien Springs, MI. Here there were limited options in the area of red wines, but we tasted a few reds and whites that we really enjoyed. We settled on purchasing a bottle of the Vineyard Red, which is a dry red table wine from Round Barn.