For the second year, I attended The Garagiste Festival held in Paso Robles Friday, November 8th and Saturday, November 9th at the Paso Robles Event Center. Celebrating its 13th anniversary, the festival kicked off with a rare and reserve “No Repeats” tasting on Friday evening at Pavilion on the Lake in Atascadero. Although I didn’t attend, it appeared to be “an epic event” by those with whom I chatted the following day.
The highly anticipated VIP tasting seminar, “1500 Cases & a Plan(e) The Gary Eberle Story: A Trip Across the Vintages with an Original Paso Pioneer” began Saturday morning at the Event Center. Moderated by Garagiste Festival Co-founder Stewart McLennan, the seminar explored with Gary his winemaking journey – from his discovery of food and wine in New Orleans in the late 1960s, to beginning his own winery in 1979, producing just 1500 cases (like a true garagiste), then piloting his own plane across America to promote his wines – to how he grew his winery into the Paso legend it is today. This year marks the 45th anniversary of the release of Eberle’s flagship Cabernet Sauvignon and Eberle’s winery was recently crowned 2024 Winery of the Year by the Central Coast Wine Competition. And let’s face it, when Gary Eberle speaks, people listen.
The Grand Tasting that followed the tasting seminar on Saturday featured an array of Paso Robles’ small production wines produced by over 50 innovative winemakers. Fortunately, I was able to have a media VIP
This Article was originally published on Grape Experiences
