Winemaker Mat Garretson now making rye in Utah
Mat Garretson
A one-time Paso Robles Rhone wine aficionado and wine salesman extraordinaire has moved on to producing double rye whiskey for the High West Distillery of Park City, Utah. Mat Garretson was the previous operator of Garretson Wine Company on Tuley Road in Paso Robles off Highway 46 East. The facility is now home to Barrel 27 Wine Company.
From the Albany Herald, By Loran Smith — In the shank of a recent evening as winds from a Midwestern front signaled that temperatures would be dropping precipitously in this part of the country, Mat Garretson, a Georgia boy, was waxing with warm emotion in his voice about the resurgence of interest in rye whiskey.
Garretson, a onetime winemaker in Paso Robles, Calif., has switched products. He now is into marketing double rye whiskey for High West Distillery of Park City, Utah, which is owned by David Perkins, a native of Atlanta. One day Garretson was an expert on the Rhone grape, and the next he was capable of delivering a verbal dissertation on the renewed popularity of rye whiskey. I expected to hear him singing a few bars from the old Tex Ritter tune which goes, “… rye whiskey, rye whiskey, I cry. If I don’t get rye whiskey, well, I think I’ll die.”
Read original story at the Albany Herald
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