The vines are readying themselves at Boathouse Vineyards production farm on Amore Road as the grapes prepare for the 2025 harvest.
“You have to be extra careful in the wines at all times,” winemaker Doug Olsen said.
Olsen comes from the peninsula as a fifth generation Queens, New York native. He started the winemaking and viticulture program at Boathouse in 2022 after leaving California and earning two master’s degrees in viticulture and enology.
Olsen says the biggest challenge so far in this stage of growth is the time to understand the vineyard. Olsen says Boathouse is focused on staying out of the conventional systems and getting the tractor out of the vineyard.
“We started off here with a brand new direction in 2022 and that vintage has been really good,” he said.
Olsen’s sommelier experience is thanks to the time spent working in the kitchen in five-star Michelin restaurants in Queens. Eventually he started to gain the trust of the people he worked for and became a server with a specialty in winology and customer relations. He played that game for a couple of years before it finally took off.
“A sommelier is someone who understands the course of the meal and how to orchestrate a meal, but how you’re able to do that through the lens of wine,” Olsen said. “From that point of view you really learn the insand- outs of the restaurant from the most basic task all the way up to documenting the seller’s vintage ... also to know where to buy the wines that are going to bring the restaurant money.”
Alcohol remains the largest margins in the wine and restaurant industries and a sommelier must understand price point value. Sommelier in a lot of ways is a poetic license, but that doesn’t mean work isn’t put in to know what you are talking about.
Olsen has identified as a sommelier for roughly 15 years. Once learning and understanding vast offering options is the best way to set yourself up for success.
From there, he says aspiring sommeliers must study geography, culture, and history to have the best chance to set themselves for success.
Olsen says the wine industry in Leelanau is a slow, focused crawl that is intentional.
“A slow crawl is what’s going to get us to step up year after year after year. I call it a slow crawl because you know, we put our best efforts out one year at a time. I do see changing. It’s changing for the better,” Olsen said. “There’s entrepreneurial spirit that is associated with this place and that makes it really exciting.”
Doug’s father Dan Olsen, admits he doesn’t know how his son got into wine as he has a beer background himself.
“He wasn’t really drinking wine. I don’t know what he was doing,” Dan said.
The younger Olsen says Boathouse Vineyards is focused on getting good healthy grapes for the upcoming vintage and focusing on getting rid of the tractor and reducing spraying on the vines.
