The Garagiste Wine Festival, which has been named America’s Best Wine Festival by USA Today, returns to Solvang Feb. 8-10.

This is the seventh year that the Garagiste Festival: Southern Exposure has showcased the wines of some of California’s best small-production winemakers in one of California’s most charming small towns. 

“America’s best wine festival meets one of America’s best historic small towns for the seventh year in a row. What could make for a better wine country weekend?” said Garagiste Festival Co-founder Doug Minnick. “There is a special place in our hearts for Solvang, and for the amazing small-production winemakers who pour at this venue. … We love the diversity of the wines poured here, with multiple micro-climates, grape varieties and innovative blends represented.” 

More than 40 winemakers from Santa Barbara County and across California will converge at the Solvang Veterans Memorial Hall to pour more than 150 wines in a weekend of events that includes the continuation of the festival’s “Original Garagiste” seminars, moderated by Garagiste Festival Co-founder and KRUSH radio host Stewart McLennan, and this year featuring Central Coast winemaking legend Ken Brown of Ken Brown Wines. 

“We are proud to lead off our main event with a one-on-one discussion and tasting with Ken Brown – a true original ‘garagiste’ many years before micro-production winemaking became a movement,’ McLennan said. “Ken was one of the first to recognize the cool climate potential of this region back in the ’70s and to craft delicious wines from pinot noir and chardonnay right here in Santa Barbara. We are looking forward to an informative and inspiring conversation as we taste some of his delicious wines.” 

In this Saturday seminar, attendees will learn how he helped shape the Santa Barbara wine scene and why he ultimately returned to small-lot winemaking. 

Brown, whose Ken Brown Wines focuses on very small lots of pinot noir from the Sta. Rita Hills, is recognized as one of Santa Barbara County’s pioneering winemakers and innovators. He was founding winemaker at Zaca Mesa Winery and spent 20 years at Byron Vineyard and Winery, which later sold to the Robert Mondavi family.

The Garagiste Festival: Southern Exposure begins on Friday, Feb. 8, from 6:30 to 9 p.m., when those attending can share limited club only, library and pre-release bottles and barrel samples along with a barbecue buffet.

After Brown’s seminar on Saturday, the day continues with the main event, the Grand Tasting, from 2 to 5 p.m.

The Garagiste Festival features the wines of commercial garagiste winemakers who make fewer than 1,500 cases per year.

For full schedule details, go to http://californiagaragistes.com/2019-syv-fest/. To buy tickets, go to: https://bit.ly/2Bcs0ck.

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Feel the intensity of the rhythms, marvel at the harmonies, and lose track of time listening to your favorite ballads, blues and classics when the Santa Ynez Valley Master Chorale and a professional concert orchestra perform at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 5, and at 3 p.m. Sunday, May 6, at the Solvang Veterans Memorial Hall.

The group’s spring concert series will celebrate some of the best of old and new in music. Beethoven’s “Hallelujah” from “Christ on the Mount of Olives” was written in 1802 and Faure’s “Cantique de Jean Racine” in 1865. Henry Mancini’s “Moon River” and “The Days of Wine and Roses” were written in 1961 and 1962.

Other selections include “The Water is Wide,” based on a Scottish folk song (1906), “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” (1933), “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” ranked sixth of the songs of the century (1941), and “House of the Rising Sun,” an Anglo-American ballad (older than New Orleans).

Tickets purchased in advance are $20 for adults and $18 for seniors (65 and over) and youth (18 and under). They may be purchased at The Book Loft, El Rancho Market Place, from chorale members, and at www.syvchorale.org. Tickets at the door are $25 and $20.

Chorale members, who come from throughout the county, range from novices to professionals and from 8 to more than 80 years old. The chorale is a nonprofit organization, coming into its 40^th year of presenting choral music in the valley.

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