ABOUT US
Domaine La Garagista is located in Vermont on Mount Hunger in the Châteauguay Forest and on Lake Champlain in the Champlain Valley. We grow alpine wine, but also ciders and cofermentations, an ancient practice that encourages vibrant conversations between our orchards and vineyards. The lands for which we care have been part of small homestead farming for over two hundred years. We practice a whole-farm and diverse agriculture focused on the marriage between soil, plant, and sky where we are not only growing wine, but also vegetables, fruits, flowers, and herbs for ourselves and our tiny kitchen and for our pop-up bottle shop and wine bar Forêt Caviste.
We farm four parcels: two vineyards in the mountains, and two vineyards in the valley. The work we do at the farm and winery, both in the field and in the cellar, is inspired by the energy of forest edge ecology, and guided by regenerative, permaculture, and biodynamic thought. We try to let all elements of the farm speak for themselves accompanied by our stewardship.
Our mission is to care for our land in creative and natural ways with plantings of cold hardy hybrid grape vines, cross pollinations between European wine grapes and indigenous grapes that grow here in the northeast. We hope to make way for the honest narrative told by the wines and ciders that express our unique landscape and each vintage year, and share in and support the spirited food and agriculture of our community.
We began planting Domaine La Garagista in 2007, and our first vintage was in 2010. In 2018, Camila Carrillo came on as assistant winegrower, and began to develop her own label La Montañuela. She became a partner in 2021. Willa Deely began helping manage the cider program in 2019, and made her first cofermentations under her Disciple Cider label. Anna Travers joined fully in 2021 and has begun to make micro-vintages of her Lilith Wines label. The newest member is Sarabeth Ivy Hurst, who is focused on viticulture and the orchards. These dynamic women and their labels are all currently imprints under La Garagista. Together, we are the hands and hearts that make up a poweful little collective: Gruppo Garagista.
Deirdre Heekin
Deirdre began her journey into wine unconventionally and in an unlikely manner. After a stint living and working in Italy, co-directing a performance and dance company, teaching English, and pulling beers and espresso in a piano bar, she opened the much-lauded bakery Pane e Salute and restaurant Osteria Pane e Salute in 1996 with her husband Caleb. Caleb was chef and Deirdre was the wine director. Over time they focused only on the restaurant and farming fruits, vegetables, and livestock for the kitchen, and then planted their first vines in 2007. They ran both the osteria and their wine label from 2010-2017, when they closed the restaurant to focus solely on growing and making wine in the burgeoning wine region of Vermont. Currently, she farms and makes wine in both the Chateauguay mountains and the Champlain Valley in Vermont.
Deirdre is passionate about wholistic and regenerative agriculture, exploring the botanical diversity of hybrid grapes and their various wine expressions, simple and honest winemaking, and the creative narratives of place. Deirdre is a graduate of Middlebury College and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The Vermont College of Fine Art. She is the author of three books, the most recent An Unlikely Vineyard. She is at work on a fourth, The Vineyard of Lost Time, to be published in 2026 with Timber Press. She and Caleb co-direct Domaine La Garagista, farming, fermenting, and running their two pop-up tasting rooms in West Addison and Barnard.
Caleb Barber
Caleb grew up in southern Vermont, and his journey to farming grapes with Deirdre is one filled with detours. He was a reluctant weeder in the family's vegetable garden. His first on-farm job at 16 was driving a pair of Belgians, cutting and raking fields, and loading haybales.
On his way to graduating from Middlebury College (Philosophy, German, Dance) he worked in dairy farming, building and renovations, and landscaping. Afterward he found his way into restaurant kitchens, washing dishes, and then advancing under the tutelage of several amazing mentors. At the end of a year spent in the Val di Chiana of eastern Tuscany, his cookery course was set on a new mission, and after more US training and an Italian apprenticeship, Caleb and Deirdre opened their own bakery, Forno Pane e Salute, in Woodstock, VT. Over the next 20 years the bakery evolved into an Osteria, and Caleb continued his studies in the kitchen, deepening his sensibility and appreciation for old ways of cooking and eating as expressions of hospitality, a way to connect people, all while the winery was slowly coming into being.
Even after they closed the osteria in 2017 to focus on La Garagista, Caleb has maintained the kitchen as the place where he composes his love letters. In addition to being the general manager of the domaine, Caleb currently develops and writes recipes for the Wednesday food section of the Boston Globe, and he has begun to contemplate a second cookbook. He also aspires to some day bring a respectable crop of chicories to full maturity in a Vermont growing season.
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