"Garage" masterpieces: where to find the best wine from small producers

The Rheingau Wine Week, one of the most important festivals for German winemaking, comes to a close this week. This year it is taking place for the 48th time.

This is the third time I've been there. The festival brings together all the elite of German winemaking, and every year there are new and interesting names, including small wineries that are sure to offer something exclusive.

It was at this festival that I once met Sebastian Kamerer, the founder and head winemaker at Johannisberger Sekthaus, a winery I have previously written about. Today his zektas sell out instantly, but three years ago hardly anyone knew about these gems of garage winemaking. I am still amazed at how it is possible to work such wonders in a small cellar with Riesling and many other varieties that make cosmically delicious sparkling wines.

Since meeting Sebastian, I have become increasingly interested in garage winemakers specifically - their wines are the ones you have to hunt for.

Garage wineries have a magical appeal. Perhaps because it's always a bit of an adventure. It is the hunt for something unusual that makes the world of garage wines so fascinating.

Garage wines are called garage wines not because they are all really literally produced in garages (although there were some of the first ones), but because of the philosophy: micro-production, strict quality control, complete independence and no desire to adjust to the mass market. Usually it is a matter of producing very small batches (sometimes 1000-3000 bottles a year) only from their own grapes or, in extreme cases, from close acquaintances, and maximum attention to each barrel.

The term "garagiste" was coined in France in the late 1980s to refer to winemakers in Bordeaux who made wine according to their own rules: in tiny spaces, bypassing bureaucracy, focusing on a unique style rather than an appellation label. Back then, the older generation of winemakers skeptically said, "Well, they're just guys from garages." But gradually, skepticism was replaced by respect as garage wines began to receive high scores from critics.

Today, garage wineries can be found all over the world, from France and Italy to New Zealand and Argentina. They have no advertising, no marketing and certainly no factory scale production. Everything rests on the winemaker's personality, taste, skills and very often stubbornness.

Garagistes like to experiment with varieties and methods: unusual blends, wild yeasts, long macerations, aging in amphorae, cement "eggs" or rare wood barrels. You can usually recognize a distinct signature style blind, provided of course that you have tasted the wine before.

Such wines rarely end up in wine shops, let alone supermarkets, as they are bought up by collectors, restaurants with good sommeliers and... friends of the winemaker. If you come across a small and unknown winery on your way through absolutely any wine region, give it a try, and if you like it, grab a bottle or two for safekeeping. Who knows, maybe five years from now you'll be uncorking a legend.

- Valandraud (France, Bordeaux) is the originator of the garagiste movement.

Jean-Luc Tuneven and his wife Muriel bought a tiny plot of land in St. Emilion in 1989 - just 0.6 hectares. They made their first winesliterally in the garage. The idea was audacious: reduce yields to a minimum, select only the perfect berries, ferment them in small vats and age them in new barriques. The result stunned everyone, including notable critics such as Robert Parker, who gave their 1998 Chateau Valandraud 1998 95 points. As you can imagine, the price of their garage wine skyrocketed after that. Today, Valandraud has Premier Grand Cru Classé status, and each wine is a jewel of work. Tuneven has shown the world that a tiny independent winery can compete with the grandees of Bordeaux.

- Domaine de la Tournelle (France, Jura) - freedom and wild yeast.

Winemakers Pascal and Evelyne Claret bought just a few hectares in Arbois in the Jura region in 1991. They immediately chose the path of minimal intervention: hand harvesting, spontaneous fermentation with wild yeasts, no filtration and almost no sulphur. The wines are aged in old barrels or amphorae, and each batch is a pure experiment with varieties like Savagnin and Pulsar.

The winery is so Ma that the entire volume - a few thousand bottles a year - goes lightning fast to trendy wine bars and wine libraries.

Their wines are very special, expressing to the maximum the peculiarities of each vintage. Plus the incredible openness of the winemakers themselves - if you come to the winery, Pascal will personally meet you and give you a tasting.

- Sine Qua Non (USA, California) is a legend that grew out of a garage.

Austrian Manfred Krankl moved to the United States, worked in restaurants and made wine for friends. In 1994, he bottled his first batch. Thus began the history of Sine Qua Non - always unique blends with predominance of Syrah and Grenache varieties, each year with a new name and label drawn by Manfred himself. It is a collector's wine, where every little detail has been thought out by the author.

Production - no more than 3-4 thousand cases a year, almost all goes to subscribers on a waiting list that stretches over years. Sine Qua Non just started out as a garage project, but now it's more of a former garage band that has grown into a legend. Their first official release, 1994's Queen of Spades from Xi, is still hunted by collectors.

- Cobaw Ridge (Victoria, Australia) - organic and granite.

Alan and Nellie Cooper bought their plot in the Macedon Range in the 1980s. Here, 610 meters above sea level, the grapes grow on poor granite soils and the climate is much cooler than in the rest of Australia. From the beginning they have relied on organic and later biodynamic viticulture. Their Shiraz and Chardonnay are very subtle, elegant, with a bright mineral character, a far cry from the usual Australian powerful and deep style.

- Garage Wine Co. (Chile, Maule) - saving old vines.

In the early 2000s, Canadian Derek Mossman and his wife Pilar Miranda started buying grapes from Chilean farmers who kept old (50-80 year old) vines of Carignan, Pais and Grenache varieties. These varieties were considered "unfashionable" in Chile at the time, and vineyards were often abandoned.

Now they are reviving forgotten varieties and traditions of Chilean winemaking, giving them a modern twist. The wines at the winery are fermented in small vats, only hand labor is used here, and they often experiment with long maceration. The resulting wines are deep, slightly wild, powerful and fruity.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor