Shady Lane Back on the Market; Loamstead Project Looks for New Home

Shady Lane Cellars is back on the market, 15 months after it was announced as the site for an ambitious rural development and regenerative agriculture concept. That effort, dubbed the Loamstead Project, is still proceeding, but will take a different form and won’t happen at Shady Lane, the Leelanau Ticker has learned.

The Ticker broke the news last July that Amanda Danielson, founder, co-owner, and sommelier at Traverse City’s Trattoria Stella restaurant, had assembled a team to buy Shady Lane and turn the Suttons Bay winery into “a transformational rural development initiative rooted in regenerative agriculture, sustainable wine production, and community education.”

Dubbed the Loamstead Project, that plan was described in press materials as a “four-year, $10 million capital project” that would turn “over 100 acres of Leelanau County vineyards and historic outbuildings into a working campus that connects researchers, students, farmers, and visitors from northern Michigan and beyond.” Components would have included a commercial kitchen, a culinary classroom, and 8,500 square feet of new meeting and event space.

“I always had this idea to show a better way forward for agriculture, for hospitality, for all of these things that are so intertwined in my professional life,” Danielson said last June. “Because, historically, the jobs in both sectors are not considered to be high-quality jobs. Yet, we have people working in those jobs locally that are doing very well. So, how do we create a playbook?”

Those efforts, she said, started at Stella, evolved with initiatives like the Dirt to Glass conference and a field lab on Old Mission Peninsula intended to showcase “how to farm better and the message of ‘better grapes, better wine.’” When Shady Lane hit the market, Danielson formulated the Loamstead Project as an opportunity “to prove out all the concepts I’ve been espousing all these years.”

In addition to Danielson herself, the project would have involved longtime Shady Lane winemaker Kasey Wierzba, a pair of Trattoria Stella veterans (Sarah Bielman and Elise Curtis-Dull, the restaurant’s business manager and chef de cuisine, respectively), and Melissa and Dawid Conradie, co-founders of Conradie Event Design.

Questions emerged about the future of the Loamstead Project earlier this summer, when Shady Lane hit the market for $3.6 million. The winery had previously gone up for sale in the spring of 2024, for an asking price of $5 million. Listings at the time cited the 2022 death of owner Richard Fortune as the reason for the planned sale, with Fortune’s family sharing a desire “to have a more involved owner” for Shady Lane. Those listings were pulled once the property and business went under contract with the Loamstead team.

In a written statement provided to The Ticker, Danielson said the Loamstead Project and its objectives “are alive and well, though it will ultimately take a different form than the plans we shared in 2025.”

“After careful consideration, we have withdrawn from the purchase agreement for Shady Lane Cellars,” Danielson said in her statement. “Out of respect for the parties involved, we are limiting our comments regarding the transaction but we remain deeply appreciative of Shady Lane Cellars, particularly the stewardship of its vineyards and the work of Kasey Wierzba and her team. They have built something that is among the best in Michigan’s wine industry. Our enthusiasm for Michigan wine, agriculture, and the Leelanau Peninsula remains unchanged. We continue to believe strongly in the long-term opportunities within the region and look forward to sharing more about Loamstead’s next chapter.”

Scott Cullumber, on behalf of Shady Lane’s ownership family, also provided a written statement. He confirmed Shady Lane is once again on the market, but shared no additional context on why the Loamstead deal fell through.

“Our team here at Shady Lane Cellars is and remains focused on what matters most: growing and crafting SIP-certified Michigan wines that reflect northern Michigan from the ground up,” Cullumber said. “Nothing about that has changed. The Loamstead Project was proposed for the property but would not have impacted operations at Shady Lane Cellars itself. We will keep you updated as soon as we have developments to share.”