St. Julian Winery

St. Julian is one of the defining names in Michigan wine: the state’s longest-running winery, its first craft distillery, and a producer with a reach that goes well beyond a single tasting room. The home base is in Paw Paw, Michigan, where grapes are crushed, fermented, tested, bottled, and shipped, and where visitors can see the operation at full scale. Fourth-generation family leadership still guides the business, and the winery works with fruit grown largely within 40 miles of Paw Paw, including estate fruit from the 40-acre Mountain Road Estate Vineyard in the Lake Michigan Shore AVA.

The range here is broad in a way few Michigan producers can match. St. Julian makes dry and sweet wines, dessert wines, sparkling bottles, fruit wines, hard cider, and a full spirits lineup that includes whiskey, vodka, gin, rum, brandy, and agave-based spirits. Estate varieties at Mountain Road include riesling, sauvignon blanc, pinot gris, pinot noir, syrah, cabernet sauvignon, and sangiovese, with those wines feeding the Founder’s Series and Braganini Reserve bottlings. For travelers, the Paw Paw location is the clearest expression of what St. Julian actually is: a large, working Michigan winery with tours, barrel tastings, multiple tasting spaces, and enough variety to satisfy the friend who wants dry Riesling and the one eyeing a slushie or flavored whiskey.