Especially in the French Saint-Emilion (Bordeaux) in the 1990s created designation for special wines (French Vin de garage or Vin de salon), which in the smallest quantities of often only a few hundred crates or a few thousand bottles to be produced. These wineries are also referred to here as "garagiste" or "micro-château", although not all are necessarily small. The term garage wine is not to be understood literally. It is derived from the computer industry, where from the 1970s, small businesses (such as Apple, Microsoft and INTEL) have produced high-quality, innovative products in simply furnished rooms and indeed in garages. These were referred to as "garage companies" and justified the boom in the California "Silicon Valley". Garage wines draw the lowest yield from often very old vineyards, strictest manual selection of the highly ripe grapes, Barrique in to 100% new barriques and none or only gentle filtration out. In general, it is about full-bodied and high-quality red wines of the highest quality, often the grape varieties Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot (also unmixed ) be used.
In the meantime, the term has also extended to special wines from regular châteaux. Well-known producers of garage wines are in France Château Le Pin (Pomerol), Château Marojallia (Margaux), Château Canon-La-Gaffelière and Château Valandraud (Saint-Emilion). As a consultant was often the French oenologist Michel Rolland (Born 1947). In USA count the enterprises "Sine qua non" of the native Austrian Manfred Krankl and Screaming Eagle to. Here vineyard cross-beginner (gentleman farmer) take the extremely low yield into account with great financial expenditure. Likewise, in Israel developed a very similar wine culture in the 1980s, where these products are called "boutique wines". It is no coincidence that the garage wines are very common to the most expensive wines in the world counting with fantasy prices. The term cult wine has similar meaning, which are rather long-established wines known wineries are called.
