Make a Visit to the Garlic Festival Wine Tent

Next weekend, the Gilroy Garlic Festival will take place. This time-honored event is known for bringing thousands of people to our communities, ready to enjoy the wide assortment of activities and wonderful food that have helped make Gilroy the place to be in late July.

One area you must visit while at the festival is the Wine Tent, an annual showcase of local wineries that is managed and operated by the Gilroy Rotary Club. The Wine Tent is located near the south entrance of Christmas Hill Park.

The history of the Wine Tent started when the South Santa Clara Valley Wine Grower’s Association decided the Garlic Festival would be the perfect place to promote the vineyards and wineries in the area. The responsibility of operations was done by the local wineries, which would rent tents, staff the booths and bring in wines they were anxious to expose to the public.

About 10 years ago, the Department of Alcohol and Beverage Control informed the wineries that they could not pour their product at the Garlic Festival because they did not have off-site sales licenses. Not to be deterred, the Garlic Festival folks, under the leadership of the late Dick Nicholls, decided to call on the Gilroy Rotary Club, the only organization they felt was large enough to handle the logistics of the Wine Tent alone.

The wineries participating this year include Casa de Fruta, Clos LaChance Winery, Fortino Winery, Guglielmo Winery, Hecker Pass Winery, Pedrezzetti Winery, Rapazzini Winery, Thomas Kruse Winery, Sycamore Creek and Zanger Vineyards.

The Gilroy Rotary Club is responsible for getting the Wine Tent up and running. After confirming which wineries are participating, the Rotary Club purchases the wine (at a discount) from the wineries, sets up the tent, coordinates ticket sales, provides ice and cups, stemware, signage and other items. Garlic magnate and Rotarian Don Christopher provides a refrigerated trailer to keep everything cool and safe. The Rotary Club sends an entourage of 100-plus volunteers, mostly Rotarians themselves, over the course of the weekend to assist the staff representatives of the wineries. The Rotary Club also sets up the booth for mimosas, a refreshing combination of sparkling wine and orange juice!

Visitors to the Wine Tent will need to purchase a ticket, which this year sells for $6. The ticket gains entrance into the Wine Tent. The guest can then choose from a few tasting options.

The first option, and most popular one, is to use the perforated tickets to select four 1.5 ounce servings of wine from any combination of wineries represented. You can also use the entire ticket for a six ounce serving if you happen to know what wine you would like.

The participating wineries will not be able to sell you any of their products on-site, but most will have knowledgeable staff there to answer any questions, provide directions to their facilities and sign up those interested in wine club membership.

The adventurous and curious will definitely want to try the „Chateau de Garlic“, a white wine-flavored with fresh garlic from Rapazzini Winery!

Due to the large number of visitors, it is impossible to provide wine glasses for everyone, and most tasting is done from small plastic cups. For those interested, a souvenir wine glass with the Garlic Festival logo is available for $5.

Rotarians Marco Renella and Brad Bannister are two important people who are helping organize this year’s event. „We emphasize strongly to our volunteers that this event is fun, but also has a much larger purpose. The proceeds gained from the Wine Tent, around $18,000 last year, are combined with other fundraiser proceeds that the Rotary Club organizes each year. These funds are then distributed to local nonprofits and charities, with a special emphasis on youth,“ Renella said.

The Gilroy Rotary Club also demonstrates the motto of Rotary, „Service above Self“ with the Project Share Life booth that is right next door to the Wine Tent.

Project Share Life is a world-wide effort to establish a bone-marrow database. For people who have leukemia and other life-threatening diseases, this may be their only hope for survival.

„Gilroy Rotary has been involved with Project Share Life since 1998. Since that time, over 20,000 people have been added to the database from efforts year-round by Rotary Districts 5170 and 5130. About 500 new, potential donors are added each year from the Garlic Festival,“ said Gary Bowe, President of the Gilroy Sunrise Rotary Club.

„The process is easier and more advanced now. Instead of taking a small blood sample, a simple oral swab is used. It is quick and painless. We hope that we can add even more this year,“ said organizer Marina Thomas.

Do something for yourself and stop by the Wine Tent to enjoy a great assortment of local wines. Do something for others and take a few moments to stop by the Project Share Life booth too.

Source: gilroydispatch.com