About Michigan By The Bottle

We are Shannon and Cortney Casey, suburban Detroiters and certified sommeliers who adore Michigan wine. Believing that the wines from our great state, and the wineries that produce them, were generally underappreciated and underpublicized, we founded MichiganByTheBottle.com in June 2009. It started out as just a blog, but quickly gained traction and popularity. We discovered that there was an extensive base of consumers committed to “drinking local” and ripe for unification, as well as an entire population of prospective Michigan wine lovers that remained untapped.

We now post original content on Michigan wines and wineries regularly, including articles, audio podcasts, video podcasts, video features, winemaker interviews, video travel diaries, travel guides and more. We also aggregate Michigan wine-related links from around the web. We facilitate the largest Michigan wine-loving community online, with thousands of Facebook fans (who actively discuss their wine adventures and experiences) and Twitter followers.

The more involved we became in the wine industry, the more deeply in love with it we fell and the more determined we became to making it an even bigger part of our lives. With the nearest wine trail over an hour away, we started feeling like we lived in what we call “the black hole of Michigan wine,” and we were noticing how many excellent Michigan wineries were virtually unknown in metro Detroit.

That’s how we ended up partnering with several Michigan wineries that were smaller, family-run, with self distribution or limited distribution, but were highly acclaimed. Each has its own fascinating origin story and its own winemaking philosophy, but all are committed to producing quality wines using estate-grown and/or locally sourced fruit. These are people who we’ve come to adore since meeting them, and we hope our customers will come to feel the same way about these wineries and their products with the chance to try them in our tasting rooms.

Read more in our Michigan By The Bottle fifth birthday blog.

Group & Private Tastings

Interested in arranging reserved tastings for small groups (10-30) during our regular business hours or larger/corporate groups (30+) during our off-business hours? Click here to get the basics! Ready to book? Give us a ring at either store and ask for Cortney or drop us an email to get started. (Nonprofits: We also have a Private Fundraiser Tasting option to help raise money for your cause!)

Regardless of whether a formal group tasting is booked, groups of eight or more visiting during regular business hours may be placed on a token tasting system to allow us to serve everyone more efficiently. Thanks for understanding!