The Future Is Bright for Small-Batch Winemakers at Garagiste Festival

In a world full of big wine labels, how do you find the smaller ones? That’s the point of Garagiste Festival. It was co-founded by Doug Minnick and Stewart McLennan in 2011 as a way to bring multiple small-batch winemakers together into one place to showcase their work and collectively find their audience.

Minnick was further inspired by a speech from Jerry Lohr of the successful J. Lohr Winery that encouraged others to “pay it forward” by supporting the Wine and Viticulture Program at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Starting small, and growing ever bigger 14 years in, proceeds go to the Garagiste Festival Scholarship Fund to benefit Cal Poly students.

For background, garagiste was a term originally used in France to disparage small-batch winemaking—making wine in a garage, not following rules, doing it your own way. Now it’s a movement that embodies the optimistic and inspirational efforts of small-batch winemakers.

Garagiste Festival participants are all creative and passionate producers, some of whom were pouring their wines for the public for the first time. This doesn’t mean they were fresh graduates or new to the industry; it was the opposite. Many we spoke to came from larger wineries and developed a few barrels of their own in a corner of their workspace. Some had left careers far outside the winemaking industry to pursue their passion.

This made their small operations truly hand-crafted and hard to find in an otherwise vast sea of big production wine. Experiencing the wine from them felt sincere and authentic, expressed in so many ways: the label names, the bottle artwork, the names of their blends. When you have a chance to make something your own, such as these winemakers have, every part of it has meaning.

Garagiste Festival occurs in multiple regions: Northern California, Southern California, and here on the Central Coast. Each winemaker produced 1,500 cases or less. Everyone was passionate and enthusiastic about their work. Everyone. When pressed to disclose a favorite within their lineup, each winemaker was reluctant to answer. “I can’t pick one, I love them all!” was the most common response, and I get it—small batches prioritize quality over quantity.

For this Garagiste Festival, located indoors at the Veterans Memorial Hall in Solvang, we focused on all the Santa Barbara County labels, but there were winemakers pouring at the event from the Central Coast up to Napa and Sonoma.

Garagiste Central Coast covered a full weekend of activities. Yet to come this year are Garagiste Festivals for Northern California, Southern California and another for the Central Coast in Paso Robles. For those who can’t attend, there is a Tasting Pass available for purchase that covers over 70 winery tasting rooms throughout California and is good for the entire calendar year. For $69, you’ll get two-for-one tastings at wineries throughout the state, enjoy discounts on purchases, and support the Garagiste ethos of celebrating small-batch winemakers.