The Best Wineries (and More) to Visit in Michigan Right Now, Wine Enthusiast, October 2024
Dave and Jackie Bos met while both were working in Napa, but dreamed of opening a vineyard of their own in a younger wine growing region, where they could influence quality winemaking and sustainable farming practices. They opened BOS in 2010 just outside Traverse City in downtown Elk Rapids, where they now work with growers in both California and Michigan to produce their singular portfolio of biodynamic wines.
These include crisp, fruit-driven whites and rosés, such as zesty Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc co-fermented from the Leelanau and Old Mission Peninsulas and prickly, pét nat-esque Valvin Muscat and Pinot Blanc Méthode Agricole. Reds include peppery, rhubarb-scented Blaufränkisch and Merlot blends and plummy 100% Cinsault from Lodi.
In Northern Michigan, Summertime Is Pure Magic, Conde Naste Traveler, May 2024
Bos Wines’ Methode Agricole is an effervescent treat
Poppycocks' Lavendar Haze, Northern Express, September 2023
Just like Tay’s song, this drink is purple, dreamy, and a little bit out there. There are the usual suspects—lavender honey, lemon, and Long Road Sovereign gin—given an elevated touch with a slosh of BOS Wine’s Riesling.
Northern Lights Issue, Venture North Funding, August 2023
Going organic breeds healthy soils, wines, meals and people! At BOS Wine, it’s where the fruit comes from that’s key to great wine.
The Wine Raconteur, Methode Agricole, August 2023
Methode Agricole is a very easy drinking wine that brings some of that magical brioche taste at a moderate price, and it is a fun wine for groups.
Video of Dave's presentation on biodynamic farming to the Elk Rapids Garden Club, July 2023
Lake Michigan Has a Bustling Wine Scene. Here’s How to Explore It, Wine Enthusiast, June 2023
In the summer months, when it stays light well past 10 p.m., dinner on the beach is the preferred way to end the day. Bos stocks the cooler, stows the kayaks in the back of the truck and heads to Elk Rapids Day Park.
Northern Michigan Is Ready for the Summer Spotlight, Vogue, May 2023
“I’m here to make world-class wines, but because we’re not constrained by the wine world’s expectations, we can have fun and play,” says Dave Bos of Bos Wines, a renowned viticulturist who produces a range of crisp, fruit-forward whites and rosés from Old Mission Peninsula grapes, including an effervescent summer-ready Methode Agricole. “There’s just so much potential in Michigan.”
Episode 148, Inside Winemaking Podcast, April 2023
This episode features David Bos in his third time on the podcast. In this episode, we cover David’s return to Michigan, organic farming near Lake Michigan, the new Bos Wine Garden in Elk Rapids, and the basics of advancing a newer wine region in the US.
The Inside Scoop on Compost, Good Fruit Grower, April 2023
“Compost is rich with humic colloids, which are like little super-saturated particles that allow for the holding of nutrients, so a vine’s root tip can come find them,” he said. “And the compost is also feeding the cover crops and feeding the other life in the soil, (so) if you have been composting for a number of years in your vineyard, you will have this diversity of life that helps roots grow and your cover crops thrive, and makes nutrients more available.”
Designing purpose: Jackie Bos of Bos Wine on the art of the wine label, Frame Stories, July 2022
“I think a lot of consumers are taking a lot of factors into consideration when they’re buying a bottle of wine,” says Jackie Bos of northern Michigan’s Bos Wine. “But a lot of people also like picking up a pretty bottle they can give as a hostess gift and have on the table for a holiday dinner. For me, a pretty package is a really important part of the whole thing. You’re sitting and talking and eating and checking out the label and it’s just part of the whole experience.”
BOS Wine pushes boundaries in Michigan wine scene June 2022
In Michigan’s still-young but expanding wine industry, there’s always room for people who want to try something new, challenge the norm and push boundaries. Include BOS Wine among those innovators.
Sipping Sustainably, Eco-friendly farming takes root at NOMI wineries, Northern Express, June 2022
Dave Bos, owner of the Elk Rapids-based BOS Wine, established his winery after returning to northern Michigan from Napa Valley, where he converted 367 acres of the famed Grgich Hills Estate winery to biodynamic and organic farming practices. Principles of biodiversity and biodynamics govern the entire operational approach of the farm.
BOS Wine Brings Back-to-Basics Farming to Northern Michigan, Traverse Northern Magazine, April 2022
The first clue that something truly different is sprouting at BOS Wine can be found with a closer inspection of the handsome green-and-white sign on the front lawn. It reads BOS Wine Garden. While the flowers out back offer an idyllic spot to sip outdoors, the garden is just as much a metaphor for what owners Dave and Jackie Bos are striving to accomplish with their vineyards, and beyond.
The Wine Raconteur, BOS Ruby, March 2022
This was a fun wine to try and the wine has a pretty light ruby color with notes of cherry, and on the palate, it was a medium-bodied wine that offered some fruit with some effervescence and ended with some spice. The owner of The Fine Wine Source was so enamored with the freshness of this wine
Michigan Uncorked, February 2022
“It brings health, quality, and vitality to the farm system,” says Bos. “I’ve seen sick vineyards become healthier, going from sickly vines to making world class wines.”
BOS Wine Garden opens in Elk Rapids, Record Eagle, September 2021
Like the couple behind it, BOS Wine is 50 percent Michigan and 50 percent California. It’s 100 percent about a biodynamic and organic approach to vineyards Dave Bos has worked on in both Michigan and California, where his wife, Jackie, called home. This emphasis on farming practices is the reason behind the ‘Dig Into Goodness’ theme BOS Wine emphasizes in every bottle, from its first vintage in 2010 to the present.
Lick The Plate Podcast, September 2021
David shares some of his favorite places to eat around NW Michigan.
Q&A with David Bos, longtime consultant is launching a winery, Michigan Wine Country May 2021
David Bos and the wine industry go back a long way. The longtime specialist vineyard consultant and Michigan native is finally realizing a dream of opening a winery — with his wife, Jackie — in his home state.
Compost & Organic Farming, Inside Winemaking Podcast
In the second part of our discussion we talk about the critical elements of running on organic spray program for grapes, specifically to control powdery mildew. Our conversation weaves in and out of technical farming and then even touches into some of the biodynamic preparations and how, and when, they are used in the vineyard.
Beyond the Cowhorn, Inside Winemaking Podcast
In great detail David Bos explains “that biodynamics can give you better health, quality, vitality” and the four tenets that he deems critical towards that end are compost, observation, biodiversity, and the biodynamic preparations. The bulk of our conversation is spent exploring those topics and how David incorporates them into the care of his vineyards.
How A Nineteenth-Century Plant Disease Changed Winemaking Forever. Wine Access
"A type of rootstock called “AXR” was promoted in California as phylloxera-resistant for about 80 years, recalls David Bos, who managed the vineyards at iconic state winery Grgich. Interestingly, he says, many of the AXR vineyards began having phylloxera issues when they began using fertilizers and irrigation in the 1980s, fostering “a nutrition source that allows phylloxera to thrive.” One Grgich vineyard, a Chardonnay site in Carneros, which is on the AXR rootstock, has phylloxera still, he explains. They were on the verge of pulling out the vines, but they hesitated “because the fruit was still good,” says Bos. Instead, he began shifting to organic farming. The result was that the vineyard stabilized itself and now makes elegant wine. Again, the tactic managed to preserve older vines.
Napa Wine Project, Dave's Wines The Club, July 2016
It is the journey of practicing what he has learned over the years about biodyanmic farming when converting a non biodynamic farmed vineyard to one is which gives him the greatest enjoyment. He has built this knowledge into a successful consulting business with clients in both Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino counties. His business, Harvest Bos focuses on vineyard consulting and composting practices.
The Life Cycle of a Wine Grape: From Planting to Harvest to Bottle, Wine Cooler Direct, July 2016
“Without sulfur, you end up with an unstable wine that would not age gracefully,” says vineyard consultant and winemaker Dave Bos of Bos Wines. “In other words, the wine would be kind of a hot mess.” Some consumers shy away from sulfites, but Bos notes that there’s more sulfur in one handful of dried fruit than there is in four bottles of wine.
Life Between The Vines, Episode One, April 2015
Biodynamic farming is what Dave Bos is all about. And Dave's eyes light up when talking about biodynamics...being that he is a Vineyard Manager and a Winemaker, I guess that would be no surprise.
Biodynamics is Ascending, The Diary of a Wine Buyer, June 2013
Humans have been aware of moon phase harvesting since ancient times. As recently as 100 years ago, farmers understood the relationship that nature, their farms and their plants had with the moon. “What they didn’t have in education, they made up for in observation. says biodynamic farmer Dave Bos. “Today, we tend to discount what we observe. A lot of vineyard managers write work orders from their desks,” says Bos. “They don’t even go into the vineyard to see it what it looks like. I learn a lot more from walking the vineyard and observing.”
In Vino Veritas, MIT Technology Review, August 2009
Many grape growers in both valleys are sold. David Bos, a young farmer with midwestern roots and the evangelical air of the religion major he once was, extols the advantages of biodynamics; all five of the vineyards owned by Grgich Hills, the Napa winery he works for, are Demeter-certified. “People ask if it makes economic sense,” he said when he took me to one, near Yountville in Napa. (Several farmers said their initial changeover to biodynamics cost them a few thousand dollars an acre over several years.) “But we’ve seen biodynamics heal our vineyards.”