In November of 2011 The Garagiste Festival held it’s first event in Paso Robles showcasing the “maverick” wine makers of the area and their wonderful limited production wines. The event was a huge success and the word was out in a big way – small wineries, creative winemakers, delicious wines! 2012 brought the second Festival and once again the public was wowed by the passion, vision and wines of  forty-eight artisan “garagiste” winemakers producing wines from thirty-eight varietals.   With an estimated nearly 200 garagiste winemakers in the Paso Robles area and on down the Central Coast of California into the Santa Ynez region, clearly there was a need for another Garagiste Festival a little further south. Enter The Garagiste Festival – Southern Exposure!

Last weekend, once again, 32 winemakers pouring close to 100 wines, let the wine world know they were playing for keeps – whites like chenin blanc, grenache blanc, viognier and chardonnay – crazy yummy rosés and reds – oh the reds! While you might expect plenty of great pinot noir from this area, and there was, grenache seemed to win the day. The event, held at the Solvang Veterans’ Memorial Hall, was sold out and social media is all a buzz about the great time had by all.

A “more or less” complete list of wineries and what they were pouring:

Some of the highlights:

Always good to see Larry Schaffer of Tercero Wines. Especially liked his ’11 Viognier, White Hawk Vineyard, ’09 Mourvedre and his 2012 Rosé of Mouvedre, soon to be bottled.

Shawn Shai Halahmy of Shai Cellars, was there pouring his very popular ’09 Adome (Cab/Syrah blend) and his ’09 Grenache. He had excellent help pouring from good friend, Denise Lowe, the Goddess of Wine.

The “king of grenache”, Mikael Sigouin of Kaena Wine Co. had 3 grenache wines from different vineyards to pour along with barrel samples of his soon to be released ’12 Grenache Rosé. All were delicious!

Good to re-connect with James Ontiveros of Native 9 (’09 Pinot Noir) and to meet Jeff Fink, the winemaker for Pence Ranch. He and owner Blair Pence had 3 pinots, all 2010, but from different areas of the estate. All got top marks in my book!

Other notables were C. Nagy (’11 Pinot Blanc-Bien Nacido Vineyard), Larner Winery (’10 Estate Viognier, ’09 Elemental and ’09 Syrah), and Storm Wines (’09 Pinot Noir,Santa Maria Valley). Best car of the day clearly went to El Rey Wines, who also poured two pinot noirs, both very good.

So much great wine under one roof! Congratulations to the folks at Garagiste Festival for providing another great wine-tasting opp! After a couple of hours tasting and schmoozing, we took a walk through picturesque Solvang, bought cookies and danish, ( a must when visiting the town), and finished the day with a detour to some tasting rooms in Los Olivos to pick up wine to take home. A great “day-cation”!  One more treat on the way home….a perfect California sunset…..