Why Is This Lost Village Called "Grape"?

Grape — The rich soil here once made Monroe County the highest producer of grapes in Michigan. But now the baton has passed to the Old Mission Peninsula, Cheboygan, and West Michigan. This discovery bothered me. I have no problem with the rest of Michigan producing wine, but why did we throw our heritage away?

You’d think wineries would have to be all over Monroe County. We have the River Raisin after all, so named by the French because of the wild grapes that grew along her banks and still do to this day. Raisin is French for grape.

There is also Raisinville Township, which houses the lost village of Grape, which was named because it sat on the edge of the river. Grape produced lots of “juice” from 1912 to 1928. Some local businessmen bought the old grist mill and started the River Raisin Hydro-Electric Company, which housed a generator and supplied “Grape juice” to surrounding rural villages. But as far as the grapes that grew on the river bank, they were only used for private wine production.

Today, Grape no longer exists. The only remnant of the incorporated village is an old sign for The Grape Pantry hanging above what is now a private residence.

In 1890, Talcott Wing (no relation to me) published his history of Monroe County. He comments on the grape growing industry, saying, “...Over one thousand acres under cultivation… This fact being demonstrated, quite a large number of vines have been annually set out for the past twenty-five years. Monroe County is now second to no place on the lakes in this particular.”

Today, there are no wineries in Monroe County. There are obviously places that sell wine, such as the Michigan Wine and Beer Portal in Monroe. I asked one of their employees if they sold any wine produced in Monroe County, and though most of the wines are from Michigan, he said there were none from around here.

In 1863, Joseph M. Sterling planted a vineyard in Newport on the Pointe aux Peaux peninsula and opened the Pointe aux Peaux Wine Company in 1868. The small limestone winery building was built in 1870 and had 22-inch-thick walls to keep the wine at 60 degrees all year. The vineyard and building were on 25 acres of land, right on Lake Erie.

Sterling wasn’t the only winemaker in the county. Since French settlers arrived in the 1700s, families had been harvesting wild grapes and making their own family fermentations. Sterling was the Edison of Michigan winemaking. His work even spread to Ohio and Canada by growing grapes on the 9.5-acre Middle Sister Island, located in Lake Erie’s Canadian waters, and influencing the growing of grapes on Put-in-Bay and Kelleys Island.

Just like in West Michigan and the Old Mission Peninsula, the soil of Eastern Monroe County is right for grapes with sandy, loam soil. Sterling’s wine company alone produced 67,000 pounds of grapes in 1871, making 5,000 gallons of wine. In 1872, Monroe County as a whole produced a record of 420,000 pounds of grapes, making 40,000 gallons of wine.

But Sterling didn’t keep the fruitfulness of the land to himself. He encouraged others to grow grapes. About 20 vineyards existed in Monroe County in 1873, and by 1887 over 1.6 million pounds of grapes were shipped to nationwide grape juice and wine sellers, Welch’s included. Monroe County produced half of Michigan’s wine in the late 19th century.

And yes, this is the part where I say the P-word. In 1920, the only wine growers that survived in Monroe County were those that supplied Welch’s and other grape juice manufacturers. But Prohibition soon ended and some wine production was still around. All across Michigan, sweet wine was the norm until American Soldiers returned from World War II and had a hankering for drier wines. Many of the wineries didn’t adapt to the new taste. Most closed.

Monroe County apparently failed to adapt, leaving the grape growing to the vineyards on the shores of Lake Michigan.

The one place that tries to preserve the grape-growing heritage of Monroe County is the Michigan Wine and Beer Portal. There is a mural of a vineyard that once brought forth good fruit on the shores of Lake Erie. The Portal is a nice place. At least they have Michigan wine and try to bring a culture of enjoying the craft in Monroe County. On their back patio, which is right on the Raisin, they have grapes growing on the fence.

I visited Mr. Sterling’s old winery. It’s still there. But a modern house has been added onto it. There is no vineyard, and the 25 acres that once produced a majority of our state’s wine are now replaced with lakefront homes.

The commercial grape industry has died in Monroe County. But the grapes have not. When I drove my family through the lost village of Grape, I pulled off on the side of the road and saw the beautiful River Raisin and pondered how it was the river that fed the beginning of Michigan’s grape industry. It is the reason the wild vines still produce grapes today.

Driving further up North Custer Road toward Monroe, I saw a home a few hundred feet from the edge of the river. At the front of the gravel drive was a small fence with green grapes growing in fat clusters, reminding me that there are private family wine traditions in the county, found on the dinner tables of Christmas feasts.

The land is literally flowing with a river of grapes. If a young visionary planted a vineyard along the edge of the Raisin with Sterling-level ambitions, Monroe County could redeem the heritage she recently lost.