Here is your chance to find many so-called hard-to-find artisan wines made by Santa Barbara County’s innovative, commercial “garagiste” winemakers.
The Garagiste Festival: Southern Exposure takes place March 27 through 29 at the Solvang Veterans’ Memorial Hall.
With spirited wine seminars and fun grand tastings, The Garagiste Festival, is a low-crowd, high-quality wine experience.
“We could not be happier to be back in Solvang for the third year in a row with yet another extraordinary slate of 60 talented and innovative micro-production winemakers from Santa Ynez and Santa Barbara, over 20 of whom are pouring at the festival for the first time,” said Garagiste Festival co-founder Doug Minnick. “More and more winemakers are telling us that The Garagiste Festivals are the only wine events they participate in because they are so full of passionate, knowledgeable, but decidedly un-snobby fans of these very special handcrafted wines.”
It is a chance to not only taste excellent small-lot, artisan wine, but also to learn about it from the person who makes it.
“Our audience likes to interact with the winemaker, it’s the winemaker who pours at our festival. It’s not tasting room people or distributors, it’s the winemaker,” Minnick added. “That’s something our audience appreciates.”
Festival proceeds are donated to Cal Poly’s wine and viticulture program. For more information and tickets, go to garagistefestival.com.
This article appears in Mar 19-26, 2015.