The Rise and Fall of Cabernet

[dananne]

Tastevin -- Not to answer for Foodie (to whom the question was asked, and who will likely correct or modify my answer if needed), but "garage wine" is a term used for a (supposedly) high-quality, extremely expensive wine produced in very small quantities. Generally, they are made in very small facilities (sometimes rented ones) from sourced grapes or from a very small plot of land, where the yields are typically extremely low. Often, they pare down the yields to virtually nothing but a few healthy grapes and then vinify them in spanking new oak barrels. Then they charge an obscene amount for a few oversubscribed bottles. A Bordeaux example, possibly the original, is Le Pin in Pomerol. After their success, others followed suit. Since most of these operations were housed in tiny accomodations (the Le Pin wine cellar is in the basement of a derelict farmhouse), Nicholas Baby, a French writer, came up with the name "vins de garage" and called the vintners "garagistes." There are several examples from California that drove the Cab costs way up for supposedly elite bottles, most notably Screaming Eagle. They garner high scores, but my budget (and wife) would never let me close enough to give a personal opinion of their merits from experience. Hope this helps [img]http://wines.com/ubb2/smile.gif[/img]