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I was sad to see on social media over the weekend that Funk Zone pioneer Christian Garvin had died at just 51 years old on September 30.
As this story explains, Garvin was on the frontlines of much more than the Funk Zone. He was also there at the start of the Lompoc Wine Ghetto in the late 1990s, and, with Andy Kahn at Kahn Winery, one of the first winemakers to open a tasting room that wasn’t connected to a wealthy vineyard estate. He helped make wine fun, affordable, and accessible to my entire generation, promoting joyous rather than regal vibes in urban rather than rural locations.
Without those early moves, who knows what Santa Barbara or even the broader California wine landscape would look like today?
I don’t think we hung out with each other enough to be considered full-fledged friends in the mid-2000s when he was starting Cellar 205 and Oreana Winery, but we were certainly friendly. He was always game to chat for another article, like this one I did in 2011 on the Funk Zone’s growth and another one about selling wine in China from 2012.
He hit rockier roads a couple years later when he was arrested for embezzlement and tax fraud, and then spent more than two years in prison. From what I’ve read and heard, he’d gotten his life back together for a few years upon his 2019 release, climbing the ladder at Total Wine for a time.
But then his background came back to affect his professional ascent, and he spiraled somewhat from there. That may be around the time in May 2024 when he last contacted me and others at the Independent, requesting that portions of two articles about his crimes be removed from the website.
The letter was threatening in tone, as are many of this type (they come with some frequency), alluding to lawyers and slander and so forth. But he did end it with a compliment that, honestly, I didn’t really remember until looking up this correspondence while I was writing this newsletter.
“On a personal note, several of the recipients of this letter know me personally and the work we did together over the years to promote the wine region of Santa Barbara, and I have the utmost respect for your publication,” he wrote. “Despite living 3,000 miles away, I still read it every week.”
Our hard policy on that, as I told him, reflects the policy of every other self-respecting newspaper in the country: Unless there have been grievous errors, we don’t erase the archives — indeed, keeping a record of what happened is a primary job of community news sources. But we will amend articles with new information that exonerates or otherwise alleviates some of the ongoing damage being caused by the article’s existence.
We traded a couple more emails, and my last message to him was: “[B]ecause we’ve seen this be a lingering concern for others in your position, we do offer the chance to tell your own updated story in a follow-up piece if that’s of interest. That is more than most publications will offer. So we can add to the record, and even link to new stories within the old stories, or clarify old stories with verified information that counters the government’s position. But we can’t take records away.”
He never responded again. It sounds like he sold all his belongings and moved to St. Croix not long after that, working for a barbecue restaurant called Boots & Bones and, more recently, at St. Croix Cellars. The place was for sale when he started working there and, tapping into his knack for finding investors, he arranged its sale to new owners just this past August.
Life was looking up, or at least it could have been.
Unfortunately, Garvin was unable to remedy a dangerous relationship to alcohol, which he never tried to hide, even way back in the early days. When we’d meet to chat about an article, he’d often be sipping Rolling Rocks during 10 a.m. interviews, and proudly relay how he liked to spend certain weekday mornings at Jimbo’s Bar on De La Vina Street watching The Price Is Right and slamming cocktails with the all-day regulars.
Anyone who knows me realizes that I’m about as open-minded as it gets when it comes to day drinking, drinking on the job, and so forth. In the wine industry, a certain amount of that is par for the course, and I happily joined Garvin for cold one or two in those pre-lunch hours.
But even the thirty-something version of myself was concerned, and I later assumed that behavior played into the decision-making that led to his professional stumbles. It appears to be what led to his death as well.
I only say as much because I actually think that Garvin wouldn’t mind the truth being known in this regard. When he left for the Caribbean, I don’t think he planned on coming back. And there’s a sort of end-of-the-road romanticism — albeit a tragic one — in selling it all, moving to an island, and fading away.
Garvin’s legacy, meanwhile, won’t go so gently. As revealed by the outpouring of emotion and memories on social media since his passing, Garvin’s life and impacts will be remembered. And they should be. We have him to thank for so much of what we take for granted today.
Allan Hancock Leads the College Wine Scene
I’ve been pretty amazed by the wines coming out of Allan Hancock College’s winery since the program started submitting wines for review to me at Wine Enthusiast more than seven years ago. They punch far above their price class, often scoring higher than wines two to three times the price. (Here are 62 reviews of mine from over the years.)
I’ve written about this a few times for the Independent, such as recommended wines from this newsletter back in 2022, a story about getting wine jobs in 2015, and a Farm Day story in 2023. I was even interviewed about it once by the New Times of S.L.O. back in 2019.
I’ve pitched a statewide story to my Wine Enthusiast editors over the years — Allan Hancock is one of about a half-dozen California colleges that make wine — and they finally took me up on it when UC Davis launched their own program earlier this year. So I interviewed professors and students from Fresno and Davis to Cal Poly and Livermore, tasted a bunch of their wines, and wrote this story: “These California Colleges are Producing A+ Wines.”
After tasting so many of them, I can confirm that Allan Hancock’s bottlings are very likely the best college wines in the state.
From Our Table
Here are some stories you may have missed:
- Ryan Cruz reports on the struggles to survive at Del Pueblo Café in Goleta, which is raising money to cover rent and other costs.
- Leslie Dinaberg dishes on what to expect at the Los Olivos Wine Festival this Saturday.
- Aiming to bring people back to wine country, Joey Tensley dropped tasting fees in his tasting room down to just $1.
- I also wrote a profile of St. Avalo Wines, who will be pouring at the Santa Barbara Vintners Fest on October 18.
- And, again, my story about the death of Christian Garvin.
- Here’s a revived story on Central Coast pinot noir that I spruced up for Wine Enthusiast by picking some more recent bottlings to buy.
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