Les Garagistes: Fighting the French Establishment from Their Garages

The 90s was an era famed for its technological and cultural advances. From the first MP3 players and games consoles being created, to great historical events like the birth of the internet, the 90s was a decade that is likely never to be forgotten. One movement that became famous in the 90s was Bordeaux’s Garagiste movement. This movement saw wine enthusiasts from Bordeaux take on the biggest vineyards of the region, from the comfort of their own garages.

Old World and New World Wines 

Grapes have been cultivated in Europe for millennia and have been used to make wine for most of that time. When Europeans settled in the new worlds of America and Australia (and South Africa and New Zealand) they took vines with them. As it turned out, the vines grew better and made plumper fruits with more flavoursome wine in the sunny climates of the new world locations.

Old world wines relied a lot on a concept called ‘terroir’ – this is the land that the vines were grown on – a good terroir produced a good wine and the vintners grew rich and built chateaux. Bordeaux is a region of France with good terroir and many famous chateaux that can charge a high price for their wines (often a blend of merlot, cabernet franc and sauvignon known in England as ‘claret’).

The only problem with these expensive wines is they required a lot of knowledge to pick one that tasted good. You had to remember which chateau had produced good wine in what year. The new world vineyards produced wines that were consistently good every year. 

Enter Les Garagistes

Like all the best things (Furbies included), the Garagistes movement started in the 1990s. Their idea was to use modern agricultural techniques to ensure the quality of grapes year-on-year. The Garagistes came from little-known vineyards. The big chateaux called the wine vin de garage as an insult. But the Garagistes embraced the term and produced small quantities of good wine aimed at the international market. The wine was universally judged to be tasty and it started to command as high a price as the posh chateaux wines they’d been rebelling against.

The British Answer to The Garagistes 

Here in the UK, we are lovers of both wine and beer and in recent years, the trend of homebrewed alcohol has started to become more popular again. While many people choose to commandeer their kitchens for their alcohol production (much to the dissatisfaction of their partners), the garage is actually a great place to have your brewery or winery, provided you can control the temperature. Fluctuations in temperature can affect the fermentation process – so it is important that you have an insulated door if you are making wine in your garage. 

Finding it hard to open your manual garage door with your hands filled with brewing apparatus? We can help, call us on 01603 787069 or email us on sales@autodoorsandgates.co.uk.

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