Wanna Drink Wine From a Garage?
From bootleg Prohibition hooch to garagiste wines, great stuff continues to come out of garages.
Thinking of someone making wine in a garage may hark back to the days of people making moonshine or bathtub gin. Apparently my dad’s grandmother did this. I love picturing a squat Jewish woman from the old country brewing up a batch of hooch during Prohibition — during the same time her son, my grandfather, drove a hollowed-out car to Canada to sneak booze back to Chicago. What a family lineage I have! The bathtub hooch wasn’t necessarily good. It was strong as fuck. But it definitely did the trick during a time people really needed it.
This more modern idea of garage wines, or garagiste, refers to a group of independent winemakers in France, specifically Bordeaux, who made smaller-batch, pretty good wine in garages, farmhouses or small industrial-type buildings. What started in the 1970s became a movement with critical acclaim in the ‘90s and started spreading across the world. While many of these winemakers release low-yield production, some do get a bit larger. The rise of the natural wine movement has also aided an interest in garage wines as many either source grapes from minimal-intervention, organic, or biodynamic farmers.
The popularity of garage wines helped usher in another movement: urban wineries. I recently wrote an article about some of the best urban wineries in America for Thrillist. When I started my research, I knew of some, especially the large City Winery chain with locations in Chicago, Brooklyn, D.C., Nashville, Hudson Valley, N.Y. and Philadelphia, and the Chicago Winery, the latest offering from the First Batch Hospitality, the folks behind Brooklyn Winery. These larger-scale operations source grapes from vineyards and farmers around the country (and sometimes Argentina and Chile, not necessarily super sustainable though) and produce the wines on site.
As I dug in for this story, I quickly learned urban wineries have sprouted up all over the country, from Minneapolis to Berkeley to L.A., Charlotte, and Portland, Ore. — which claims around 30 urban wineries alone, including Enso Winery. I sought geographic diversity as well as diversity among ownership and winemakers, like at Mural City Cellars in Philly. I also asked wine friends in or near those cities if they knew of places since I clearly wasn’t able to visit most. Feedback ranged from, “They’re making great juice!” to simply, “Meh.” The point is: You don’t have to travel to a far-away wine country to get good wine. Sometimes it might be down the street from your house.
One thing tying most of the urban wineries together is the desire to make more natural wine from grapes sourced at vineyards within a few hundred miles of their location. That actually opens up possibilities for many of these wineries in large cities surrounded by farmland across America.
There’s even an entire festival now dedicated to California micro wineries making no more than 1,500 cases of wine per year. The Garagiste Wine Festival began in 2011 and now takes place four times a year in Solvang in Santa Barbara County, Sonoma, Glendale in Los Angeles, and its main event in Paso Robles each November. Most of these wineries don’t have tasting rooms so this is a great opportunity to taste wine from intrepid producers you may normally not be able to access.
Many of these urban wineries, like Infinite Monkey Theorem (IMT) in Denver and Broc Cellars in Berkeley, were born out of a desire to make wine they wanted to drink and in turn have made wine a lot of people want to drink. Broc is one of the more respected smaller-production natural wineries in the U.S. and I am a fan of the wines owner Chris Brockway puts out, especially the KouKou cabernet franc and Vine Starr zinfandel. But there’s so much more in the lineup. And with IMT, they even helped pioneer the canned wine movement (they also bottle wine), but unlike a lot of the canned ready-to-drink beverages on the market today, these are actually delicious.
But back to wine made in a garage. Literally.
Last December, I got a cold email from someone named Thao with Tank Garage Winery. The friendly note asked if I’d be interested in tasting their wines produced out of a vintage gas station in the heart of Calistoga, at the north end of Napa Valley, which is surrounded by incredible vineyards and winemakers. Knowing a bit about this area since I lived in San Francisco back in the day, it took me about 2.3 seconds to reply, “Yes!”
When the package arrived, it had three wines, all blends — I Love You But I’ve Chosen Disco (zin, syrah, petite sirah and, as they claim, “the sexiest wine you’ll ever taste” and it wasn’t too far off), La Loba (a carbonic white blend with chenin blanc, petite manseng and two others), and Pray For Surf (a super pale rosé made mostly from mourvèdre, a bit of grenache, and a dab of cinsault). To say they’re all delicious would be an understatement. Tank has the luxury of playing around with grapes they buy from the area and it really represents the new generation of winemakers. It’s fun, funky and really tasty wine.
So what’s my point? There’s great wine all over the place. Don’t poo-poo something if it’s not from a place you recognize. Of course not everything is great, but you’ll be surprised to find out how many wines really are fantastic if you just get them a chance.
The SG List
SG Read: Do you love The Macallan? Did you know you can taste through one of the most comprehensive collection of this Scotch in Chicago? Read about it in Crain’s (apologies it may be behind a paywall).
SG Coffee: A couple of years ago, with Drew and I both working from home, we decided to lean in to our drip coffee maker. But we wanted really good, locally roasted beans. That’s when I discovered Trade Coffee, a fantastic subscription service that teams with small-batch coffee roasters around the country. We get a new bag every other week.
SG Pizza: How cool that Milly’s Pizza in the Pan, which is just a few blocks from me in Uptown, won Good Morning America’s local competition to represent Chicago in the show’s United States of Pizza? While it is cool, it is disappointing the true Chicago style — thin crust, tavern-style pizza — wasn’t included. What’s your favorite pizza — let me know in the comments.
SG Meditation — “Always Home”: I’ve been meditating regularly for a number of years and love using the Insight Timer app. I have discovered many fantastic meditation practitioners for a variety of different meditation focuses. I’ve taken a number of courses, too. One I return to often is a lovely under 5-minute meditation called “Always Home.” If you need a quick refresh, check it out.
SG Music: De La Soul’s “Eye Know”
In memory of De La Soul member Trugoy the Dove, who passed away last week at 54 years old.