Garagiste Winemakers Celebrate in Solvang

The tenth annual Garagiste Festival ended another successful two-day event this past weekend. The festival focused on small, hands-on producers with 43 winemakers pouring their own selections at the normally sleepy Veterans Memorial Hall in Solvang and included seven winemakers pouring for their first time, as well as a dinner catered by Swiss BBQ Restaurant in Santa Maria. 

While tasters can easily find their go-to favorite varieties like cab, syrah, pinot noir, and zin, they also can try  albarino, riesling, mourvèdre, petite verdot, primitivo, and many more wines at Garagiste. This festival is great for winemakers pushing the envelope of what wine looks like on your average wine list or store shelf. “Garagiste is a festival that attracts people who don’t want the big brands and who are specifically looking for smaller producers, and that’s what we are,” said Matt Espiro Jaeger of Fuil Wines, who poured still in the barrel samples of his viognier and syrah from Ballard Canyon. Fuil Wines are unique and certainly a labor of love, but not something that can be found out in the world very easily. Garagiste is one way for new winemakers to show their wines without the overhead of a year-round tasting room. 

Another one of the festival’s newest winemakers is Natalie Albertson, owner of Wildflower Winery based in Ventura. She poured her sparkling red primitivo and a still riesling. Contrary to popular opinion of what a riesling “should” taste like,  it wasn’t sweet; in fact her riesling from La Quinta Norte Vineyard in Los Olivos District was totally dry with a clean, fresh finish, a delicious way to reset the palate. Like many up-and-coming winemakers, Albertson sources her fruit with consideration to site, variety, and availability among other factors. Her second wine, a pet nat primitivo a k a zinfandel as we call it in the states, came from a very unusual site called Rock Farms Vineyard outside of Palmdale, and was farmed using the careful consultation of Jeff Newton from Santa Barbara’s own Coastal Vineyard Care. The vineyard’s dry and arid desert location scattered with Joshua trees is a good fit for zinfandel, a grape variety that requires intense heat to ripen but whose tight clusters are prone to mildew in wet or humid conditions. Albertson, a former nurse whose stint in Sicily inspired her winemaking career change back in 2020, hoped that attendees would see her passion and be open to trying something new. But she also understands her wines don’t necessarily appeal to the average grocery store wine consumer, “The challenge has been finding that balance between being a winemaker and business owner and keeping that creative edge.”  

And what better place for a night of creative artisan wine than in the heart of Santa Barbara’s wine country? “Santa Barbara is the most dynamic grape growing region with 50+ varieties grown within our borders,” said Sonja Madjevski, winemaker for Casa Dumetz, who poured her mourvèdre this year. “Many of the pioneers who started in this region are still actively working in the industry and have a plethora of knowledge, advice, and guidance to learn from,” Madjevski said. As one of the festival’s “veterans,” having poured at her first festival 10 years ago, she has more than proven this point. 

Alongside Madjevski were other veterans like Mikael Sigouin of Kaena Wines who has returned to Garagiste every year and now shares earlier vintages, showing the span of his many years of winemaking in a unique vertical tasting format for attendees. Learning from elders is important for Sigouin, who owes much of the inspiration for his grenache leaf label from his Hawaiian upbringing and “Tutu,” his grandmother who helped to shape the trajectory of his winemaking career. Sigouin wants to pay it forward by offering pearls of wisdom to newcomers at the festival. “I would tell the old me not to have worked with fruit from far away vineyards that you can’t check on all the time as picking decisions are the most important part in the process. I worked with [outside] fruit in my early days and got burned because I couldn’t [easily] check on fruit and had to rely on the growers’ recommendation. I never made that mistake again.” Keeping it local and choosing the right grape source has helped Kaena maintain quality and Sigouin claims this is the biggest benefit to limiting production size and expansion of his brand. 

At Garagiste, guests have the chance to expand their palate and find new favorites among 200 wines for under $80 at Saturday’s Grand Tasting. And while Garagiste Festival is not your usual wine fest, attracting big name producers and large branded wineries funded by corporate entities, you can expect to get just as much (if not more) value for your dollar. Tickets were sold for $89 for the first night’s “Rare and Reserve Tasting and Dinner”  and $79 for Saturday’s much bigger “Grand Tasting.” Alternatively, $179 gives attendees an all-access pass plus early entry to each event, and all tickets purchased assist in raising funds for Cal Poly winemaking student scholarships through the organization’s nonprofit organization. 

As veteran winemaker Daniel Kessler of Kessler-Haak puts it, “Don’t expect to get rich making wine if you are small. It’s more about lifestyle — and breaking even!”  And the lifestyle is full of good people who like wine, plain and simple. Garagiste truly is for the real wine lover, the wine geek, the home brewers, and the people who believe wine is meant to be opened up and enjoyed among friends, preferably around a table or on a porch with some good eats.

The Solvang Garagiste Festival is an annual event. See garagistefestival.com for more information.