Domaine La Garagista Adds a Tasting Room in West Addison
Dec 17, 2024
Fans of Barnard-based Domaine La Garagista now have opportunities to taste flights of its wines in Addison County. Owners Deirdre Heekin and Caleb Barber have farmed a vineyard near the shores of Lake Champlain in West Addison since 2013. Now, the couple have transformed part of the property's unassuming house into a wine bar-style tasting room inspired by winemaker-run cavistes and frascas in Europe. They held their first pop-up in Little Forêt on December 15. The wildflower-filled vineyard at 5646 Lake Street, which Heekin called "magical in inexplicable ways," is responsible for all of La Garagista's reserve wines, including Vinu Jancu, Loups-Garoux, the Champagne-method Cybele and several oxidative wines. The Little Forêt pop-ups offer flights of those wines, as well as bottle sales. Barber also prepares a "cute snack" to pair with the wines, including various crostini, using local ingredients such as Agricola Farm's Monti Verdi Salumi, he said. The space is a fitting tribute to La Garagista's name and earliest days: It's a former two-car garage attached to the house Heekin and Barber purchased with the vineyard in 2021. They've outfitted its two rooms with elegant candelabras, greenery, long tables and a floor-to-ceiling painting of Dionysus that was once a French stage backdrop. Little Forêt is larger than the pop-up space at their home farm in Barnard (known as Forêt), the couple said, and will host most of their tasting events through the winter. "The roads in Barnard last winter were really bad, and there's a flat, paved road here," Heekin said with a laugh. They also welcome the chance to connect with consumers in Burlington and the rest of the Champlain Valley, she said. The tasting room will open for pop-ups "every two or three weeks," Heekin said; dates and plans for "other fun things" will be announced on social media and in the winery's newsletter…