From cultists to professionals and amateur hobbyists, garagistes are a significant presence in California, Bordeaux and the Cape. As Ingrid Motteux discovered, if the name covers various identities, all share an overriding passion to make wine.

The French language has a knack for making the most mundane things sound romantic to us. Thus, the home winemaker is transformed into something infinitely more exotic and exciting - a garagiste. (Although the name does apply to those who make wine in their garage, the garage itself is not mandatory.)

The garage, though optional, has a strong and practically un-gainsayable precedent. When, in the late 1970s, Belgians Marcel and Gérard Thienpont purchased the land in Pomerol, Bordeaux where they established Château Le Pin, the concept of 'garage wines' did not exist. It is still in the garage that Jacques Thienpont crafts his 600 cases of this cult wine. The garagiste phenomenon was boosted in the early 1990s by the appearance of another starring Bordeaux micro-château, St Emilion's Château de Valandraud (with a tiny 'garage-like' winery). Helped by wine critic Robert Parker's eulogising and a bull market, the prices of these wines entered the stratosphere.

California also has its share of expensive cult garagiste wines, but there is also a gratifying groundswell of less reverent and precious 'amateurs' who call themselves 'home winemakers' - a rather different, though in some ways overlapping, category. (Perhaps one of the attractions of making your own wine is that you get to choose snappy names for it, like 'Road Kill Red' and 'Scarlet Harlot - A Grenache of Easy Virtue'.)
Jonathan Maltus, ex-African and owner of St Emilion garagiste winery, Chateau Teyssier, claims he'll be making the first garage wines in Australia (aptly named Exile and Émigré). And although there are many micro-wineries in Burgundy, few if any refer to themselves as garagistes - perhaps because garage scale and methods are nothing new there?

Cape successes
In the 2003 edition of the John Platter South African Wine Guide, micro-ventures were responsible for a quarter of the five-star rankings. As publisher Andrew McDowell noted: 'It seems the garagiste movement is very much alive and well, and making some of South Africa's top wines.' Grumbling followed from some quarters because of the winners' extremely limited availability. And there's a clue in all this: it is much easier to make excellent wine in small quantities. The winemaker is able to pay more fastidious attention to detail.
But if the garage isn't mandatory, what makes a wine, or a winemaker, garagiste? Being a garagiste is more about philosophy and scale than vinification in a bath, garage or shed. It is an attempt to return to artisanal, individual, handmade wines, the very antithesis of mass production. As Cathy Marshall of BWC wines, and the Cape's first garagiste, remarks: 'I think the more technology we have, the more we yearn for simplicity.' It also involves an approach of accessibility rather than exclusivity. You do not have to own a château, estate or winery, or even your own vines to make great wines.

Perhaps another obvious criterion for qualifying as garagiste is the solo nature of the enterprise. The garagiste winemaker, intimately involved in every step of the process, is practically bound to make a wine which reflects his or her personality, just as a painting reflects the personality of the painter. It can be wine made to your own standards, with passion coming before profit.

Chris Williams, winemaker at Delaire, and creator of micro-production label 'The Foundry', has enough enthusiasm to convince the most sceptical observer. Like many new-generation winemakers, he did not inherit a winefarm, and the garagiste route was the only way he could fulfil his desire to make a wine he could control from start to finish, without having to refer to accountants, marketers, or anyone else. 'It's primarily about intention: you must want to create something of beauty and individuality. It is an egotistical endeavour in that it is the vision of one person, who by paying attention to detail understands what it is they want to achieve.' (And achieve he has already, with five stars for his Syrah in the 2004 edition of Platter.)

The independence of the garagiste offers another advantage. Unlike an estate, they are not necessarily obliged every year to vinify what might be poorer quality grapes. Not owning vineyards allows them to be super-selective about the grapes they use. Many of the serious garagistes, however, nurture their leased vines as well as their relationship with the grower. Some would probably only reveal the source of their fruit on pain of death, so vital is it to their aim of ultimate vinous perfection.

Ideas about what makes a truly great wine can border on the eccentric. The garagiste, as lone winemaker, is ideally placed (and indeed perfectly entitled) to read poetry or play Mozart to his or her wines. In the absence of truly scientific tests, they can at least, never be held up to truly scientific ridicule.

Banding together
Locally, a determinedly non-elitist affiliation provides an important support and resource-sharing framework for a like-minded group of people producing their own small quantities of wine. The anarchistic-sounding Garagiste Movement was founded by winemaking consultant Cathy Marshall (who made her first wines on Muizenberg's beachfront), Clive Torr, Cape Wine Master and maker of garage wines in both Burgundy and the Cape, and barrel supplier Mark Howell. To belong to this group, members must be registered and certified as producers, must finance the operation - from grapes to barrels and packaging - themselves, and are limited to a total production of 1000 cases. They have to make the wine themselves - which some do at home, others using space in an established cellar.

Most of those affiliated to the Garagiste Movement are part-time enthusiasts. Photographer Ivan Volschenk was making experimental beer in his kitchen when he was given 400 kilos of excess grapes by a grower friend. His Milla wines are made in a converted subterranean storeroom of his Stellenbosch home, where he has also planted 39 shiraz vines. Philip Mostert, winner of Michelangelo Award's new Garagiste category with his Kamma Dispore Syrah, is a full-time doctor whose enthusiasm for wine led him to embark on this venture.
For others, however, like Eben Sadie (Swartland-based maker of Columella and Palladius), it is not merely a side-line. He also makes wine, on an even tinier scale, in Priorat, in Spain, and these two garagiste activities are his and his family's livelihood.

Tanja Beutler, co-ordinator of this fraternity and co-maker, with Torr, of Topaz wines, claims that 'if you make it into the second year, you qualify as a true garagiste'. Many a romantic notion has been cured by the laborious process of batch-pressing, of racking without electric pumps. This is hand-crafting in the truest sense, and hard work with little mechanisation. Think of buckets, of punching down, dragging barrels, bottling and labelling by hand, and rushing from a full-time job to Afrox for more dry ice.

Mark Howell was down but not out when his four barrels of passion and toil went down the drain due to a problem with volatile acidity six months after it was made. 'It was disastrous. But I suppose if it were easy everyone would do it.' He went on to make 13 barrels of AntHill Pinotage 2000 the following year. Working for barrel makers Radoux helps him to accomplish some fairly expensive oaking - and to offer specialist advice to other members.
All tell of the backbreaking physical labour involved: painstakingly destalking every bunch by hand, stomping grapes into the early hours of the morning (sometimes before having to get back to the day job), bucketing everything - must to the press, press to barrel, barrel to barrel, barrel to bottle - before labelling and capsuling by hand. The paperwork involved is also enormously onerous, particularly to those like Sadie, who export widely.

Of the professional garagistes (many do not use this term) some, like Anthony de Jager, maker of Homtini Shiraz, have their employer's sophisticated facilities available to them - in his case, Fairview's. In fact, it is becoming increasingly common for winemakers employed at estates and co-operatives to be allowed to make some wine on their own account. A number of grape-growers now also keep back a parcel of their cooperative-destined grapes to make their own wine. Willie and Tania de Waal, for example, make Scali Pinotage and Syrah on their Paarl farm in an ancient cellar used by Willie's great-grandfather before the family began selling their fruit to Boland Kelder. Their equipment is essentially traditional, the flashiest item being a new small basket press.

Does the qualified winemaker have that much of an advantage over an amateur? Yes and no. Professionals are, of course, generally equipped with better understanding of vini- and viticulture. This in itself does not necessarily translate into making great wine, but it does allow the talented and experienced winemaker more leeway to employ intuition and flair in the process. Amateurs, however, are noted for their devoted and meticulous approach, something not inevit-able in the graduate camp. Homework to bolster knowledge, and all-important industry contacts (for assistance, advice, help with sourcing grapes) go some way to make up for any lack of formal training.

Most garagistes go for red wine. Eben Sadie's new white blend Palladius is a rare exception. Is redperhaps considered more artistic? Undoubtedly it is technically a more realistic prospect - making white wine is often much helped by sophisticated and expensive cooling facilities, difficult unless you work for a refrigeration company, as does Anthony Smook (who shares facilities with six other garagistes in Paarl's Main Street), or you have the use of a winery's glycol-chilled stainless steel tanks. Red wine, on the other hand, normally requires oak, and with new barrels costing over R6000, using a high proportion of them is (perhaps fortunately?) beyond the reach of all but the most flush amateur.

The garagiste, particularly the first-timer at the 'home-winemaker' end, might have no intention of selling his or her wine, intending only to derive pleasure from watching their friends enjoying and appreciating their efforts, (and from making fewer trips to the bottle store). But, whether or not the approach is deeply serious, making good wine in a garage is not a case of getting lucky. Nor is it a task for the faint-hearted.