April 14, 1999

Windsor shops let you bottle satisfaction along with your own wine

Max Ortiz / The Detroit News All that "winemaker" Jody Mattinson of Dearborn has to do is change the bottles as they fill up with wine. The staff at Frank Borrelli & Sons in Windsor does the rest of the work.

By Sandra Silfven / The Detroit News

    WINDSOR -- Weekdays, retiree Ken Mattinson, 63, of Taylor is an armchair winemaker who reads books about his favorite hobby and baby-sits his 7-year-old grandson and 19-month-old granddaughter.
    Weekends, Mattinson heads to Windsor, where he and a lot of other Metro Detroiters have discovered the newest way to process the fruit of the vine: Let Ontario's popular U-Vin stores do the work, and then bring it back home duty-free.
    "You can't beat it," Mattinson says. "You don't have to buy any equipment, and you wind up with 30 nice bottles of wine at a decent price."
    A decent price? It's more like an old-fashioned fire sale. How does $2.57 (in U.S. currency) sound for a bottle of dry riesling?
    Brew-on-premise wine and beer facilities are a multimillion-dollar phenomenon that hit Ontario and British Columbia in the late 1980s. The desire of Canadian hobbyists to make wine -- but not at home -- and the savings it can bring spurred all the interest.
    Today, Ontario has about 550 brew stores, and there are more than a half-dozen in the Windsor area.
    Though many such facilities assist customers in brewing beer, the majority specialize in wine made from kits that come with juice and all the other necessary ingredients (yeast, sulphites, stabilizers, clarifying agents).
    When the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect in 1994, Americans living near the Canadian border discovered they could could make wine at these stores, too, and bring it back duty-free, subject perhaps to a small excise tax, which U.S. Customs inspectors seldom collect.
    On-premise stores such as Frank Borrelli & Sons on Erie Street do the fermenting, partial aging, clarifying and filtering. (See a graphic that describes the process.) All the customer has to do is return in 28 days to bottle and cork the finished wine, apply labels (which many people personalize) and take it home to age.
    The bottling and corking takes no more than a half-hour. Under Ontario law, these stores are not licensed wineries. That's why customers have to do the bottling. But store employees can assist.
    "It's very easy, and I would do it again," says Margaret Kryvicky of Birmingham, who recently made valpolicello and chardonnay at Borrelli's, and has never had a problem with U.S. Customs.
    "There's no picking grapes, no crushing them, no flies. You just return in a month to bottle and cork it.
    "We had relatives over for a dinner party, and when they tasted our wines, they all wanted to make it, too. It's an adventure," says Kryvicky, who belongs to a gourmet club.
    Mattinson introduced his son-in-law, Vincent Ronewicz of Dearborn, to the store. Like many customers, when it came time to bottle, Ronewicz turned the affair into a family outing. He brought his wife, Jody Mattinson, and her father and mother to help. "If you don't have the time or the equipment or space to make wine at home, this is a fine way to say you make your own wine," Ronewicz says.
    Juice for the kits comes from the major wine-producing areas of the world -- California, Chile, Italy, Australia and France -- and is available in every grape variety from chardonnay to pinot grigio, riesling, merlot -- you name it.
    In lesser-priced kits, the juice is sold in the form of a concentrate, and water has to be added. Acids, tannin and color are already adjusted, which makes the process almost goof-proof.
    Some of the best juices come from Australia, where different processes for making it transportable seem to preserve more of the grape aromas, which is the hardest thing for kits to retain.
    In all cases, the juice undergoes flash-pasteurization (similar to the way kosher wines are produced), so it can be packaged and shipped.
    Depending on the quality of juice you use, Frank Borrelli Jr. says the quality of the finished wine is equivalent to a $7 to $18 bottle you would purchase at a store.
    "The better the kit you buy, the better the wine you get," Borrelli says. Kits range from $65 to $115 Canadian, including corks. Bottles, labels and neck capsules are extra, but you can bring your own if you wish.
    To make one of the store's most popular wines -- a midlevel quality riesling -- and purchase bottles, labels and capsules, you would pay about $116.50 Canadian, or about $77 U.S., depending on the day's exchange rate. ($1 U.S. equals about $1.50 Canadian.)
    And remember, a kit makes 30 bottles of wine, so that means the price per bottle in U.S. currency is about $2.57.
    Of course, you can pay less for the kit and mix it up at home, but then you would need a stash of winemaking equipment, some expertise and the space and time to do it. It's the quantity and personalized labels, though, that make this process so appealing.
    "Batch wines are popular for parties and weddings," Borrelli says. "It's common for customers to order three batches for a wedding, have it bottled in splits, apply custom labels and give one to every guest."
    It's also typical for friends and families to band together to make different varieties and then trade. Borrelli says 30 percent of his customers are Americans, and many are women. "They aren't as intimidated by the whole process as men," Borrelli says. "They start the idea and then get the men involved."
    But how good can a wine made in 28 days really be?
    Borrelli reminds that it is not ready to drink the minute you carry it out the door. "The wine is in bottle-shock and the acids are out of balance for a while," he says. "You should age it at least three months, and optimally a year."
    Ronewicz made a Cabernet-Merlot blend from a kit with juice, not concentrate, and immediately opened one bottle to test.
    "The wine is still very young," he says, "but it seems like it will be a good wine."
    Bob Sarniak, winemaker at Bel Lago Vineyards, a new winery in northern Michigan, has made wine at home and tasted wines from kits. Generally, he approves.
    "Using glass carboys, you can't get the same complexity you do from using oak barrels," he says, "but you can make OK wine that way.
    "And besides," he adds, "it's great to be able to say you did it yourself."

Max Ortiz / The Detroit News Vincent Ronewicz of Dearborn, left, turned his bottling day into a family affair, bringing along his wife, Jody Mattinson, and her parents, Albena and Ken Mattinson of Taylor.

Where to make wine

    In Windsor
   
    * Frank Borrelli & Sons, 485 Erie St. E., (519) 977-7144
    * Vintner's Cellar, 3850 Dougall at Cabana, (519) 966-0036. (Franchise with 21 stores in Ontario.)
    * Vintner's Cellar, 398 Manning, (519) 979-7288
    * Windsor Brew Factory, 2785 Howard. (519) 250-8602
    * Beer Brew It Here, 2660 Ouellette, (519) 250-8554
    * West Side Brew Depot, 2055 Huron Church, (519) 966-8734
    * Parkway Custom Beer and Wine, 2825 Lauzon Parkway, (519) 944-4063
    * Great Fermentations, 180 Tecumseh Rd. E. (519) 258-1911
    * Fruit of the Vine Winemaking, 6555 Malden, LaSalle (519) 734-8686
   
    In Michigan
    There is one Metro Detroit facility licensed to make beer and wine: The Detroit Brew Factory, 18065 E. Eight Mile, Eastpointe, (810) 776-8848. Opening April 15 is a second, Fieldstone Brewing Co. and Winery, 223 S. Main, Rochester, (248) 656-0618.
   
   


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