March 18, 2024

2 Lads with a dream

Aug. 31, 2008
Everything about the new 2 Lads winery is bold, edgy and eye-catching. You could say the same about the hip, 30-something owners, Chris Baldyga and Cornel Olivier.
The winery reflects the inner them.
Two Lads is about 14 miles north on Old Mission Peninsula and well worth the trip up the skinny strip of land, which offers shimmering views of the east and west bays. If you haven’t been on Old Mission in awhile, vineyards are everywhere—a veritable Napa Valley of the north.
Two Lads sits atop a large hill off Smokey Hollow Road. You can’t miss the huge angular, flat-roofed building rising up from a grassy mound with monstrous panes of concrete, steel, aluminum and flashes of orange. Inside is black leather furniture, more orange, and clever accents of cork. Baldyga explained that he and his partner prefer the spare, minimalist lines so as not to clutter up the experience of wine tasting.
The building’s bi-level design capitalizes on gravity to move the wine from the machines where the grapes are squeezed to a cavernous basement where it’s fermented in steel vats or oak barrels. An art gallery off the tasting room features the work of photographer Paul Osborne, who also designed the very cool wine label. Osborne, also in his 30s, has retired—at least temporarily—to
St. Croix Island, where he spends his days kiteboarding.
The men opened the winery this past May with four whites and a rosé. As of last week, they sold out of their sparkling wines. In July, they introduced a clean, fruit-driven Chardonnay. And this past weekend, the winery unveiled its first red, a Cabarnet Franc. Its taste promises to be robust and raw, reflecting its fermentation in a steel barrel, said Baldyga.
Next spring, Baldyga and Olivier will introduce cool-climate reds of Pinot Noir, Merlot, and Cabarnet Franc fermented in an oak barrel. Although white grapes are easier to grow and market in the region, the men feel up to the challenge of reds, in part, because both have been involved in wine making, even as children.

ROOTS
Baldyga, the more talkative of the two, was in first grade when he started helping out at privately held vineyards on Old Mission Peninsula. “I was six or seven when I was lugging buckets and digging tiny holes at the planting parties.”
He later got a job at Chateau Grand Traverse, where his mother has worked for 23 years. (She began as a field worker and quickly rose to the rank of operations and production manager.)
Olivier grew up on a 40-acre farm in South Africa, where his family grew wine grapes among other crops. At a very young age he helped his grandpa make wine at home, and was running vineyard crews by the age of 16.
Olivier went on to study the science of wine making in South Africa and came to Chateau Grand Traverse in 1999 at the age of 24 as part of an international work exchange program. There he met Baldyga, who did everything—from working as a “cellar rat” to pouring wine in the tasting room to production.
“For awhile, we both worked on the bottling line, and it’s straight up factory work,” said Baldyga. “We spent weeks and weeks together standing on a 3-by-10 foot mat on the end of the bottling line, listening to classic rock and talking about our rugby games.”
Olivier went on to work at Brys Estate—“He really put them on the map for reds,” said Baldyga. They rejoined in 2006 when Baldyga landed at the winery after a gig selecting and buying inventory for wine shops in Grand Rapids.

BRASH ATTITUDE
They began dreaming about opening a winery that reflected a bit of their brash attitude. They had the talent, but needed money for the high-priced venture. That came from Baldyga’s father-in-law, Dick Quartel, a highly successful Grand Rapids business owner.
They easily found a talented, youngish and experienced staff, but the ordinance of Old Mission Township drove them crazy. It imposed limitations on square footage (they got around it with the basement) to retail sales (they give away t-shirts with each case of wine since they can’t sell them).
“We’ve come to accept the ordinance, which I’m not sure is a good thing,” Olivier said.
The lads went into the venture with their eyes wide open about the long work weeks—especially during the harvest when they work from 7 a.m. until 1 in the morning. “There’s something pretty romantic about a winery, but all the romanticism is lost with the blisters and dirt in your eyes,” said Baldyga.
They predict that the wine industry will only get bigger and better in Northern Michigan as the climate heats up and cherry farmers realize that profits are more easily squeezed from wine grapes. The men, both with young families, hope to reap the rewards of trusting their instincts early on.
“We don’t look Midwest and we don’t want to. That’s what we wanted to change. We wanted to fit more in the international world of wines, not the little micro industry we have here,” Baldyga said. “The wines are young, bold, edgy—the marketing, the building, the label, it’s all us. There’s nothing contrived.”

(To get to 2 Lads go up Center Road (M-37) to Smokey Hollow Road, which forks to the east. Go 2.3 miles and look to your left.)

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