Region: Vermont
Grapes: Marquette
Alcohol: 12.5%
Notes on the Wine
In 1347 Queen Joanna of Naples was exiled to Avignon. Caught in the mistral, she sought refuge in the small castle of a gentleman glazier. When she was shown into his atelier the next day, she startled the artisan at his work. The result was a bulbous vessel that could hold ten liters. Instead of calling the broad-shaped bottle Jeanne-Reine, the modest queen suggested he call it Lady Jane, or Dame-Jeanne. Our damejeanne is a red cuvée of grapes made from two vineyards in the hills and valleys of Vermont. Both were fermented on their skins with native yeasts and blended after a year of élevage in glass demijohns. This alpine wine is unfiltered and unfined. From our cantina to your table.
Notes on the Producer
We are located on Mount Hunger at the edge of the forest in the Châteauguay and in the Piedmont chain of hills in Barnard, Vermont. Here we grow alpine wine and ciders. Our land has been part of small homestead farming for over two hundred years. On the farm, we attend to the care and observation of our native terroir, a whole-farm and diverse agriculture where we are not only growing wine, but also vegetables, fruits, flowers, and herbs for ourselves and our tiny kitchen and for our spontaneous, always last minute pop-up tasting room/wine bar, Hart: tavernetta forestiera + bar a vin, and Boîte: supper club. We farm four parcels of vineyard: the homefarm vineyard les bonnes femmes, a joint project just across the road, les forestières, and two older parcels in the Champlain Valley, les carouges and i selvatici. The work we do at the farm and winery, both in the field and in the cellar, is guided by regenerative, permaculture, and biodynamic thought. We try to let all elements of the farm speak for themselves accompanied by our stewardship.
Our mission is to care for our land in creative and natural ways, make way for the honest narrative told by the wines and ciders that express our unique landscape and each vintage year, and share in and support the spirited food and agriculture of our community.
We began creating La garagista Farm + Winery, this farmstead landscape, in 1999 with first efforts at restaurant gardens, as the sister and backbone to our long-standing osteria pane e salute which ran for twenty years in the village of Woodstock, Vermont; the winery opened its doors in 2010 with the first vintage. We closed the restaurant in 2017 in order to focus our attention solely on the farm and winery and our pop-up projects. Deirdre Heekin is winegrower, organizer, writer, photographer, flower farmer, would-be designer. Caleb Barber is gardener, cook, designer, builder, mechanic, factotum, philosopher, farm manager. Camila, the assistant winegrower, is grower, organizer, creator, systems manager, right hand. We are farmers. Just like the garden spills into the vineyard, and the roses spill into the orchard, we always have a flow of creative people who lend their skills, thoughts, and energy to the project at hand whether its pruning, planting new vines, turning new beds, or harvesting. For them, we are forever thankful.
These are the hands and hearts that make La garagista.
