The Goose Festival wrapped on October 11, and the apple trees are near their last weeks. This year, Fennville's fall events keep running through December 12. Starting in late October they shift from barns and pumpkin patches to tasting rooms on 62nd Street and 122nd Avenue. A new lakeshore food and wine festival also puts November on the map for the first time.
The orchard clock runs out first
Crane Orchards says apple u-pick runs 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, weather permitting, until the season ends, which is "typically close to the end of October." Crane's has not posted a fixed 2026 closing date. Call before you drive out the last weekend of the month, because the trees set the date and the calendar doesn't.
Overhiser Orchards posts that its pumpkin patch is open and apples are available for u-pick, daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., holidays included. Its update feed shows no post date and no end date, so the same advice applies.
The orchard season's last big night downtown is Fourth Friday on October 23, 5 to 7 p.m. The Saugatuck/Douglas visitor bureau lists this month's theme as Pumpkin Palooza, hosted by Overhiser Orchards and Blackhawk Farms. The city's own Fourth Friday page says the series ends in September. The October 23 date comes from the city calendar and the visitor bureau listing.
Crane's Pie Pantry on 124th Avenue bridges the two halves of the season. The pantry lists daily hours of 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. It also takes pre-orders for next-day pickup, with pumpkin pie on the list, and asks you to call for same-day requests. For shipped pies, the site lists order cutoffs of 11/13 for Thanksgiving and 12/10 for Christmas. No year is printed next to those dates, so confirm them before you plan around them.
Then the calendar moves to the tasting rooms
The wineries are what keep the season going after the orchards wind down. Fenn Valley Vineyards lists hours of 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., seven days a week. It closes only on Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, New Year's Day and Easter. Modales Wines lists its tasting room as open daily from noon to 7 p.m. Michigan Wine Company's booking page offers reservation slots from 11 a.m. through 5 p.m.
Here's what's posted for Fennville and the nearby wine trail from now through mid-December:
| Date | What | Where | Cost as listed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thu, Oct 15 | Rory McCallan | Modales | Not listed |
| Sun, Oct 18 | Show night | Salt of the Earth | See venue |
| Thu, Oct 22 | Ed Gershon | Modales | Not listed |
| Fri, Oct 23 | Fourth Friday: Pumpkin Palooza, 5–7 p.m. | Downtown Fennville | Not listed |
| Sat, Oct 24 | EJ Pierogi food truck, noon–6 p.m. | Michigan Wine Company, 6781 124th Ave. | Not listed |
| Thu, Oct 29 | Jon Hayes | Modales | Not listed |
| Sun, Nov 1 | Show night | Salt of the Earth | See venue |
| Nov 5–7 | Art Coast Food & Wine Festival | Saugatuck, Douglas and Fennville | Passes from $395 |
| Sat, Dec 5 | 36th annual Nouveau Festival, noon–5 p.m. | Fenn Valley, 6130 122nd Ave. | $6 preregistration |
| Sat, Dec 12 | Sip & Shop market, 11 a.m.–5 p.m. | Fenn Valley | Free, no reservations |
The Thursday nights at Modales are the steadiest thing on that list. The calendar lists music on three Thursdays in a row this month, then the festival listing on Thursday, November 5. No set times are printed, so check with the winery before you go.
November gets a festival for the first time
November is usually a quiet month on the lakeshore. This year it has the inaugural Art Coast Food & Wine Festival, organized by the Saugatuck–Douglas Area Convention & Visitors Bureau. It runs November 5 through 7. The three anchor events are at Riverside Pavilion, 48 Water Street, in downtown Saugatuck, and more activities are spread across Saugatuck, Douglas and Fennville. Modales calls it the "inaugural" festival on its own event page, so there's no earlier edition to compare it to.
Fennville shows up in the program in three places.
- Restaurant Showcase dinners. The festival's showcase page lists two Fennville venues: Salt of the Earth at 114 E. Main St. and Modales at 2128 62nd St.
- Modales add-on sessions on Friday, November 6. Pass holders can add a winery tour at noon or 2 p.m. Weekend and VIP pass holders can also join Chef Mindy Trafman for the showcase dinner at the winery.
- A chauffeured winery tour. The tour is run by Coastal Tours and stops at four Fennville-area wineries.
The tour schedule doubles as a map of the local wine trail:
- 10:30 a.m. pickup outside the Pavilion
- 11 a.m. Fenn Valley Vineyards
- Noon Crane's Winery, Pie Pantry and Restaurant, with lunch optional on your own
- 1:15 p.m. Modales
- 2:30 p.m. Michigan Wine Company
- 3:45 p.m. return to the Pavilion
The tour starts and ends in Saugatuck, and Fennville fills the hours in between. Each stop gets a flighted tasting, with no guide.
The same wine trail costs a lot less on other days
Festival passes are priced for visitors. The Pavilion pass is listed at $395, with a $150 Weekend upgrade or a $450 VIP upgrade, and there's no day pass. A Thursday welcome party at Riverside Pavilion runs 7 to 9 p.m. on November 5.
All four tour wineries keep regular hours outside the festival weekend, and the rest of the late-fall calendar costs a fraction of a pass. Preregistration for Fenn Valley's Nouveau Festival on December 5 is $6. That covers your first glass of the 2026 vintage's first wine and a slot for a cellar demonstration, and there's pizza on site. Fenn Valley's Sip & Shop market on December 12 is free and needs no reservation. Salt of the Earth, one of the festival's two Fennville showcase venues, also has its own shows on October 18 and November 1.
You can get much of the festival's Fennville experience on regular days. The difference is the transportation, the curated dinners and the Saugatuck pavilion events.
Downtown, the regular kitchens are still running. Root Cafe at 120 E. Main Street lists hours of Monday and Tuesday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed Wednesday, Thursday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., and Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Iggy's Pizza at 218 E. Main Street offers pickup and delivery. Blue Goose Cafe and El Jaripeo were both on this year's Goose Festival list of local food and drink businesses.
Two places are missing from this year's map
The Coastal Tours route has four stops, and Virtue Farm is no longer a possible fifth. Beer Street Journal reported in April that on April 14, Greg Hall told Virtue Cider's mailing list that Virtue Farm in Fennville had been sold and would not reopen in 2026. The on-site cider shop, online sales and the Cider Society all ended. The outlet reports the cider itself will continue through distribution, with M4 handling Michigan, while Hall looks for a new production partner. After 13 years, the bottles are still around, but the farm stop on 62nd Street is gone.
The second missing piece is a downtown hotel. According to the Holland Sentinel, the DePree family's restoration of the former Stevens Hotel as the Wine Trail Inn missed its summer opening target. The family is now looking toward 2027. The plans call for a boutique hotel with suites and rooms, a restaurant and bar, a speakeasy and an event space. The Sentinel reported that the project dealt with extreme winter weather and structural problems on the building's porch, and the family has hired EV Construction to take over the work. In the same report, EV Construction's John Parker said in September that the team planned to start work that month and keep going through the winter.
This year, the festival's Fennville stops are reached by a tour that starts and ends at the Saugatuck Pavilion. If the Inn opens in 2027 with its restaurant and event space, downtown Fennville would have a hotel, bar and event space of its own.
Until then, the second half of this fall runs from Overhiser's pumpkin patch on October 23 to Fenn Valley's free market on December 12. It's seven weeks of events, and all of it is a short drive from home.
If you want to talk through what a season that runs to December 12, and a Main Street hotel targeting 2027, could mean for a Fennville property you own or are considering, David Isljamovski keeps a close eye on this calendar. Let's Connect.
