The Southern Exposure Garagiste Festival will return for a sixth year to Solvang on Feb. 9-11, kicking off Friday evening with a “No Repeats, Rare and Reserve” wine tasting and barbecue and ending with Passport Day on Sunday. On Saturday will be the morning seminar/tasting with Rhone pioneer Bob Lindquist of Qupé Cellars, followed by the grand tasting that afternoon.
The Friday evening and Saturday events will take place at the Solvang Veterans Memorial Hall, 1745 Mission Drive (Highway 246) in Solvang. Lot and limited street parking will be available.
Stewart McLennan, Garagiste Festival co-founder and co-owner of Golden Triangle Wines, will moderate the question-and-answer format of the seminar. Doug Minnick shares co-founding fame and, like McLennan, also is a winemaker and will pour his wines on Feb. 10. Hoi Pol Loi Wines is the label he co-owns.
Ticket prices range from $49 per person for Friday’s event to $130 for a weekend pass. The grand tasting is $60 per person, or $80 for early entry. An all-day VIP Saturday ticket (seminar plus tasting) is $110 per person and includes a box lunch and Stolzle crystal glass.
Among the 40-plus winemakers scheduled to pour during the grand tasting are Ascension Cellars, Cloak & Dagger Wines, D. Volk Wines, Dunites Wine Co., El Lugar Wines, Hoi Polloi Wines, Kimsey Vineyard, Luna Hart Wines, Metrick Wines, Mollie Wines, Sycamore Ranch Vineyard & Winery, Velvet Bee Wine, Vino Vargas and Weatherborne Wine Co.
A glance at the website revealed 10 wineries brand new to the festival; the founders of Garagiste are skilled at securing a fresh crop of producers every year. In my opinion, Garagiste remains the public’s single best chance to sample wines from the Central Coast’s tiniest producers.
Six of the wineries will be offering tastes of their first-ever vintage, according to Garagiste organizers.
One participating winery listed production of just 50 cases — roughly two barrels worth. According to Garagiste, more than 60 percent of those who will engage make fewer than 500 cases per year. Therein lies the true definition of handcrafted, small-lot wines.
Click here for a list of all participating winemakers and a description of each.
While McLennan and Minnick christened Lindquist “an original garagiste,” the winemaking pioneer didn’t start making wine in a garage but in 1982 at Zaca Mesa Winery, while he was employed there in the cellar with other Santa Barbara County wine legends.
The winery at Zaca Mesa was built in 1978, the same year crews planted syrah there — the first syrah in a Santa Barbara County vineyard.
Lindquist, Jim Clendenen (Au Bon Climat), Adam Tomach (Ojai Vineyard), Daniel Gehrs and Ken Brown all worked at Zaca in the early years. Brown was the site’s first winemaker.
I emailed Lindquist for his perspective on small producers, Garagiste, syrah and grenache, and winemaking in general.
Noozhawk: You have had a huge role in the growth of syrah and other Rhone grapes’ prevalence on the Central Coast. What does being called an “original garagiste” mean for you?
Bob Lindquist: Well, my first wines weren’t made in a garage; they were made at Zaca Mesa in 1982 and 1983 while I was still employed there. They were made in small quantity, though (900 cases in 1982 and 1,500 cases in 1983), and made completely by me, after hours, without the help of the Zaca Mesa staff.
We had our own barrels and small, open-top fermenters, and I used Zaca Mesa’s press, pump, space and winery bond … and then their bottling line for our first bottling. I brought in a bottling truck for the next bottling I did at Zaca Mesa.
Also, when I think of Garagiste, I think of not following traditional winemaking conventions (the French “garagiste” refers to an unconventional winemaker who likely started in a garage). My first two vintages of syrah were made in small, open-top fermenters with 100 percent whole clusters. Zaca Mesa never did that!
And my first two whites, chardonnay and pinot noir blanc, were whole cluster pressed, completely barrel fermented and put through complete malo (malolactic fermentation). Zaca Mesa didn’t do that, either!
So, yes, it is an honor to be recognized as a garagiste!
(Even though Qupé Cellars’ production has mushroomed during the past decade, Lindquist still makes some small-lot wines. —NH)
There are wines that we still make in lots as small as two barrels, garagiste style.
Noozhawk: Let me ask about syrah. In general terms, it has grown from near obscurity to one of the three most-planted grapes in this county. There’s a lot of it out there, both in barrel and bottle, but syrah has held its ground. Do you think it will ever be surpassed in popularity by, say, grenache?
BL: We made the fourth commercial bottling of syrah in California, and the first in Santa Barbara County (but from grapes grown at Estrella River Vineyard in Paso Robles). Our first Santa Barbara County syrahs came from Bien Nacido and Ibarra-Young vineyards in 1987.
Syrah does better, I think, in cool climates, so it has found a great home here on the south Central Coast. And I include the area between San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara, where all of the transverse valleys are.
Grenache traditionally grows in warmer climates, but because of our long growing season, it does really well here, too. In a cool climate, grenache shows a very elegant expression (at least if you pick at reasonable sugar levels), almost pinot noir like. I can’t imagine it passing syrah, but certainly see it comfortably along side and, of course, in blends.
I love working with grenache. It poses different challenges than syrah, since it is an oxidative varietal (since grenache is prone toward oxidation, it typically is fermented in sealed versus open-top containers).
Noozhawk: Tell me about the new Arroyo Grande tasting room, about how the Edna Valley (Sawyer Lindquist) Vineyard is faring, and if you’ve found any new vineyard sources for your Qupé Wines.
BL: No big changes. We are still making our wines using time-tested traditional methods, like open-top fermenters and complete barrel fermentation, just like in 1982! We just make a lot more wine, between 30,000 and 35,000 cases per year, depending on yields.
We still make the wines at the facility here at Bien Nacido Vineyard that Jim Clendenen and I have shared since 1989. We just keep improving our equipment as needed, and of course improving our work in the vineyards.
Louisa (Sawyer Lindquist, his wife and the owner of Verdad Wines) and I opened a new tasting room in the Village of Arroyo Grande just a few months ago. It’s a combined Qupé/Verdad/Sawyer Lindquist tasting room, and so far so good!
We still use the same basic grape sources that we have for some time: Bien Nacido, Sawyer Lindquist, Ibarra-Young and French Camp (for a portion of the Central Coast syrah).
In 2015, we had a small crop, and coincidentally, my good friend, Ken Volk, was taking a year off from winemaking, so we bought some grapes from a grower that Ken has worked with for years up in the Cienega Valley (San Benito County). We’ve used most of those grapes in two wines that I make with a Los Angeles Dodgers label — a Central Coast chardonnay and a Central Coast red blend.
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The Southern Exposure Garagiste Festival has sold out in prior years, so in order to taste wines from the region’s smallest, elite producers, click here to purchase tickets online.
— Laurie Jervis blogs about wine at www.centralcoastwinepress.com, tweets at @lauriejervis and can be reached via winecountrywriter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are her own.