“I love the intensity, and must confess; when I might have stopped at two glasses, I had a third, and found it just as satisfying as the first.”

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While not exactly a “hot bed” of sparkling wine production, there has been more and more good bubbly coming out of Michigan for quite a while now. One need look no further than the dean of Michigan sparkling wine producers, Larry Mawby, whose L. Mawby winery, rebranded simply as Mawby in 2019, is celebrating its 50th Anniversary this year. Larry has stepped back from leadership, promoting longtime team members Michael and Peter Laing to head up the operations.

The Laing brothers also have their own label, bigLITTLE, which they describe as “Big wines from our Little Leelanau Peninsula.” They source their grapes from their parents’ ten-acre vineyard in Lake Leelanau, and while they make several still wines, it’s the Tire Swing Brut that first caught this bubblehead’s attention back in 2015. So, when I found a current bottling at Ferndale’s Western Market recently, it was an easy choice to try again, and a rewarding one at that.
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