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Monday 12pm - 5pm Tuesday 12pm - 5pm Wednesday 12pm - 5pm Thursday 12pm - 5pm Friday 12pm - 6pm Saturday 12pm - 6pm Sunday 12pm - 5pm

Hickory Creek Winery

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Buchanan, MI
Hickory Creek Winery

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A veteran-owned local business creating old world style w**es from Lake Michigan Shore AVA grapes. Visit our charming tasting room housed in a red barn.
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10/16/2026

Harvest update.

We have about 40% of our grapes in the building. Yesterday was a decent crush day as we tackled just under a ton split among 4 varieties. Cab Sauv, Tannat, Petit Verdot and Carménère are now in early stages of fermentation. I also pitched the Sangiovese, Malbec, and Syrah we crushed on Wednesday.

Pic 1: Jeffrey loads a bucket of Cab into the crusher.

Pic 2: I think I see myself in that Cab Sauv. (side note: notice how the juice is light in color? If we pressed it immediately, it would be a very pale rosé)

Pic 3: Post-crush mini hoops! A couple of games of PIG with the boys is a good way to close a harvest day. But we forgot to have b**rs. Dang it.

**e **e

10/15/2026

Can we talk about Petite Verdot for a minute?

We crushed a few hundred pounds of PV this morning. I really love working with this grape. It currently makes up about 25% of our 2022 Mélange, our Bordeaux-style five grape blend.

I thought it would be interesting to compare one of these berries to a regular table grape you get at the grocery store.

There are many differences between w**e grapes and table grapes, and the contrast is especially striking with Petite Verdot. Here are the main ones off the top of my head.

1. Smaller berries mean a higher skin to juice ratio. From those skins, we are getting color and tannin into the w**e. W**e grapes have thicker skins too, again, adding structure and pigment to the w**e. Table grapes have a thinner skin that gives way to a satisfying crunch when you bite through it.

2. Our w**e grapes are sweeter, sometimes containing 20 to 30% more sugar (fructose and glucose) than a table grape. That means higher ABV potential from w**e grapes like Petite Verdot. Table grapes have more water content, helping create that juicy burst with every bite.

3. W**e grapes have higher acidity than table grapes. We need acidity in w**e to balance with the alcohol and tannins. Acidity in table grapes is intended to be mild and pleasant on the palate.

4. Seeds! W**e grapes like Petite Verdot have 2 to 4 seeds per berry. When fully ripe, these seeds add more structure to the w**e in the form of tannin, as we ferment with the seeds in the grape must. Most table grape varieties were developed to be seedless.

This Petite Verdot, with its small berry size, will add deep color and some tannin to the 2026 Mélange vintage that we will enjoy in a few years. Well, not the actually berry in the picture. I ate it. And the table grape.

**emaking

10/14/2026

Just Jimos and me crushing a few hundred pounds of Sangiovese, Syrah and Malbec today. NBD

Actually is kind of is. These varieties are some of my favorite. Can't wait to get them into barrel and then into bottle and then into glass.

These are our first red w**e grapes of the harvest. More tomorrow! Petite Verdot, Cab Sauv and Carménère! Let's gooooooo!

James Springsteen

**e **etrail

10/01/2026

Day 3 of harvest 2026. 34% of our planned harvest is in the barn and pressed into juice already!

We crushed and pressed 4,200 lbs of Vignoles today. Things went pretty well, apart from the pressing that took longer than expected. The berries were a little stubborn. The fruit didn't want to give up its juice easily, but you can see in the second and third pictures that we got the best of them.

Starting early meant that we beat the rain for the most part. We endured some showers at the very end of pressing. But as you can see in pic 4, we were all prepared with rain gear and an intense war face from Jim (juxtaposed with Jeffrey's super chill demeanor as always). The grapes were intimidated and started to cooperate more fully after this show of force.

If you haven't tried Vignoles before, don't overlook this French-American hybrid. Tropical fruit, bright acidity... and almost 23 brix! That means this w**e has about 13% potential ABV if we ferment it dry. I don't have a lot of experience with Vignoles as a w**emaker, but this has the potential to be a super interesting release down the road.

If you're at the w**ery in the next few weeks, come around to the crush pad and say hello. We might put you to work. Seriously though, ask whoever is working the tasting room (most likely Leah) and we would love to show you what we're up to.

09/29/2026

Day 1 of the 2026 harvest is in the books. Not a crazy amount of fruit (1.25 tons of Riesling and 1.5 tons of Chardonnay). But it was a long day for sure. Seems like the first crush day takes a bit longer. Getting all of the equipment set up, getting back into the routine, etc. And 4 hours between Riesling and Chard being ready means there's a lot of "hurry up and wait".

The juice pressed out nicely and tasted pretty good. I'd call day 1 a success.

If you have a minute to flip through the pictures, you’ll see a couple of nods to Mark. One day, he decided to name the crusher "Wesley" and put a Star Trek logo on it. IYKYK. I wasn't thrilled about it at the time, but didn't really say anything. He's definitely the sci-fi nerd of the family. But now, I'm so thankful he slapped those stickers on the machine. This was our first crush day without him in years. We were definitely feeling it, just over six months since he died.

You'll also see a few other pics of our small crew crushing the Riesling. A cool aerial shot Jim captured while we waited for the Chard to come in. We had a fun visitor who seems to be motioning to something to us. Assuming it was a trap, we didn't fall for its ruse. You'll see the free run Riesling pouring out of the press like a waterfall. And since we started with a sunrise picture in an earlier post, I thought a sunset post would be a fitting ending photo.

09/28/2026

We are starting to make your 2026 vintage.... now.

Harvest starts for us this morning with chardonnay and riesling.

Let's go.

09/27/2026

It was a great day at HCW. Thank you to everyone who came out to support this small business.

Thank you to the two ladies who get their hair done every two months and make us their only w**ery stop on the way home.

Thank you to the couple from Southside Chicago who, when I asked how everything was, asked how things were going for ME. (that fist bump was like power-up toward the end of a LONG day - thanks man... that was exactly what was needed).

Thank you to the couple we haven't seen since COVID that are married now and wanted to come back and see a place they went on early dates.

Thank you to the w**e club member who showed up wearing a shirt that said "Let's End Veteran Su***de"

Thank you to the people who saw a good review on Google, saw that we love dogs out here, and decided to check us out. (Millie the bulldog loves ice in her water bowl.)

Thank you to the 20 active and retired police officers from Chicago that made it three years in a row visiting HCW. We are so grateful for you and what you do for the community.

Thankful for Jeffrey and Jim and Philip and Leah and Nicholas for working their tails off today to create an amazing experience for our guests. I could not imagine a better team. I am so lucky to be surrounded by this crew.

I could go on and on.

Just grateful for all of you. 🙏

Also... the sunsets out here.

09/26/2026

Sometimes it's hard to see the forest through the trees. You have to zoom out once in a while.

I came across this company called Marcel Zeiss a couple weeks ago.

(Picture 1) They make 3D topographic maps of anywhere on Earth. If you know me well, you know I LOVE maps probably more than anyone you know. So I bought a small map of my favorite place on the planet.

(Picture 2) About 10 days later, it shows up. I love it. I bring it over to the w**ery to show the team and point out that I especially like how it shows the creek the w**ery is named after.

Jeffrey DeAngelis looks at it from the side and says:
“It looks like a w**e bottle.”

YGBFKM.

(Picture 3) This entire time, we thought the logo was the silhouette of a w**e bottle and a stylized “3” in honor of the three people who started the w**ery.

Nope.

It’s the creek.

Someone brilliantly used the shape of Hickory Creek — our namesake — as the logo and apparently didn’t tell any of us.

Between Jeffrey, Jim and me, we have more than 25 years dedicated to this property, and none of us realized the creek surrounding the w**ery is shaped like a w**e bottle.

Amazing. Perfect.

Had to share.

**e

09/15/2026

This month marks 20 years of Hickory Creek W**ery. September 8th marked nine years since I took over as owner and w**emaker. So maybe you'll indulge me in a little reflection as we get ready to kick off my 10th harvest at HCW.

On a cold Wednesday in January, Jeffrey, Jim and I hunkered down in the w**ery to talk about the year ahead. We looked hard at 2025 and thought a lot about what we could do better to make HCW the best possible w**ery experience in Michigan.

One thing I committed to was communicating better with our community. To tell you about new releases. To show you what happens behind the scenes. To introduce you to the personalities of HCW — the people who make your w**e that are fun and silly and hardworking and passionate and creative.

The same crew got together again, this time on a warm and humid September Wednesday. We looked at how we've done this year and make sure we're ready for harvest.

One of my biggest takeaways? I did a terrible job communicating with our community this year. I had good intentions. But March 25th happened, and everything went sideways in my world.

I think an easy answer would have been to prompt AI to make posts for us. I see that from others and it feels gross. You deserve authenticity and that is what you'll get from HCW.

So here we are in September 2026, with a lot to be proud of from the last 20 years and a lot to be optimistic about moving forward. And I promise to keep you all in the loop better than I have so far this year.

And I'll share something in the spirit of authenticity: visitor traffic to the w**ery concerns me. We've had a little over 7,000 visitors to HCW so far in 2026. At this same point in 2022, we had almost 12,000. That's a big difference. And as a small business owner, I think about it a EVERY SINGLE DAY.

But perhaps naively, I still believe this:

If we keep making the best w**e we possibly can, if we keep trying new things, if we keep getting a little better every day, and if we keep putting our authentic hearts and souls into every guest's experience, we're going to be okay.

(more in the comments)

09/13/2026

Did you know that we have pizza at HCW? 🍕🍕🍕

We partnered with Roundbelly's Pizza out of South Bend to bring you seriously tasty thin crust pizza fresh from our ovens.

Pepperoni. Cheese. Sausage. Carnivore. Chicken Bacon Ranch. And.... Dill Pickle Bacon (it might sound a little weird, but it TOTALLY works).

Come for the w**e 🍷 Stick around for the pizza 🍕

And when you grab some pizza here at HCW, you're supporting TWO independently-owned, local small businesses.

**e **e

Address

750 Browntown Road
Buchanan, MI
49107

Opening Hours

Monday	12pm - 5pm
Tuesday	12pm - 5pm
Wednesday	12pm - 5pm
Thursday	12pm - 5pm
Friday	12pm - 6pm
Saturday	12pm - 6pm
Sunday	12pm - 5pm

Telephone

+12694221100

Website

http://www.hickorycreekwinery.com/

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