Home | OUR WINES | FIND OUR WINES | UPCOMING EVENTS

BACKSTAGE PASS | news archive | CONTACT US

Wine - oh! The lifelong connoisseurship of wine guru Rush Garner

Birmingham Weekly, The Local Dish, June 10-17, 2004

by Brooke Michael
 

On a recent rainy Monday morning, I knocked on the door to Rush Garner’s Forest Park home to find a large man I didn’t recognize staring at me through the screened door. After he persuaded me that I was in fact in the right place, he told me that he was the son of a Texas moonshine maker who had followed his childhood vision to make wine. Edward Lee McDonald, known as Mac, owns Vision Cellars (for his childhood vision, of course) in Windsor, California. He’s one of just seven members of the Association of African American Vintners in a state of over 1,000 wineries, and produces Pinot Noirs from three counties (Sonoma, Marin and Monterey). If you’re wondering why Mac met me at the front door, it’s because he’s staying with Garner while the two men promote his wines across the state. 
 

As his first name and business name both suggest, the mastermind behind Rush Wines spends his days and nights rushing around to wine tastings and events, his warehouse in Irondale and visits from California wine makers. Garner says every day is different for him – there’s never a daily routine.

Acquired taste
 

Garner found his passion for wines at a time when most his friends were graduating from college and trying to find their place in the world. During his senior year of college, Garner’s 80-year-old grandfather, who was involved with worldwide accounting organizations, needed someone to accompany him to these meetings in places like Tokyo, Paris, London and Florence. The Tuscaloosa native remembers flying into Rome, driving to Florence for the meeting and then taking two weeks to drive to the next meeting in Paris. 
“Before we’d start our driving tour, my grandfather would give me the Michelin guide for restaurants and hotels and tell me that I could pick out the places where we’d stay and eat,” Garner says. “Since I didn’t know much about restaurants and hotels at the time, I just looked to the star and dollar column and picked out the best places for us.” 
 

It was during these trips that Garner first developed a taste for food and wine. He began to anticipate the wine more than the food itself. After returning to Alabama, Garner began working for a man who imported Burgundy – a tough project to hawk in Alabama. Garner convinced his employer to change the company’s focus to California wines, and soon began traveling to California to recruit boutique wineries. Typically, a boutique winery’s production is under 10,000 cases per year. Garner pulled in business from about 50 wineries, and helped the business develop a following for good California wines.

Rush into business
 

In August of 2002 Garner broke off from his former employer and created Rush Wines. He brought along many of the wineries that’d he’d initially recruited. Garner now represents around 60 properties in California as well as a small variety of wineries in France, New Zealand, Spain, Italy, Australia and South Africa.
 

“But the focus of what I do is California wines,” he says. Garner strives to promote wine awareness in Alabama by bringing winemakers to Alabama and arranging private tastings and tours in California for his local customers. 
 

Although Garner receives a lot of local support from independent restaurants, Rush Wines distributes throughout the state of Alabama. 
 

“Birmingham is the biggest market in the state so all of the other distributors concentrate here,” he explains. “I felt like it was in our best interest to spread out and serve markets like Huntsville, Mobile, Baldwin County, Anniston, Gadsden, Auburn, Montgomery and Tuscaloosa in addition to Birmingham.”  

Since the Birmingham wine market is so saturated, it’s not unusual for a winemaker to accompany a distributor to a tasting. But when a winemaker shows up with Garner at tastings in another part of the state, they usually get a stellar response. 
 

“When I showed up in Auburn with a wine maker last weekend, they were so happy to see me,” Garner says. “It’s nice when people who’ve been starved for fine wine appreciate what you’re doing. I’d rather drive three hours to get that feeling than drive three minutes to someone who’s ho-hum about the wines I have.”  
 

Recently, Garner participated in the Coastal Wine Tour at San Roc Cay in Orange Beach. He poured around 50 different wines for the two-day wine tasting, and brought in wine makers for dinners each night. The first night a California winemaker and grape grower teamed up with a chef from Napa Valley to create a dinner at Gauthier’s Restaurant. In addition, several other tastings, lectures and discussions were held in conjunction with the event.

Making pairs
 

For Garner, the bottom line is an appreciation for wine. He aims to work with those who appreciate good wine and want to learn more about them. Each week, he sits down with several local chefs to talk and taste wine. He also coordinates wine dinners at Birmingham restaurants in order to expose diners around the city to the offerings of wineries in California. 
 

As restaurants have come and go during Garner’s four years in Birmingham, he has witnessed a tremendous change in the food and wine market.  

“With Culinard here, I think you’re going to see a proliferation in three or four years of students who graduate from that institute, go abroad, train under various chefs across the world and then come back to Birmingham and open restaurants,” he says. “We’ll get a lot of influences from other areas back here once those chefs come back and establish their own cooking identity.”  
 

You can find Rush Wines in locally-owned restaurants and grocery stores like V. Richards and Western Supermarkets as well as a few Piggly Wiggly stores.