Virginia Wine and Garlic festival founder looks to future

By Scott Marshall

Published: October 1, 2008

Richard Hanson sat at his dining room table last week, poring over plans for what will be the 18th edition of the signature fall festival for Central Virginia and certainly the biggest in Amherst County, but his eyes were fixed firmly on the future.

For information about this year’s festival, visit http://www.rebecwinery.com/page10.html

He’s busy presiding over a new venue that he envisions will play host to any number of community events, including a new summer festival and more regular musical appearances.

Not that the past doesn’t bear mentioning.

“Yeah, it’s got a life of its own,” Hanson said of the Virginia Wine and Garlic Festival. He had been involved in the Sorghum Festival for 20 or so years, and so he had some experience.

He actually laid out Rebec Vineyards 21 years ago with a festival in mind.

An herbalist, Nancy Gripp, approached him. “I had told her I was going to do a festival,” he recalled. “She called and said, ‘You think you could include garlic in your festival?’

“Wow, yeah, what a great idea,” he recalled thinking.

A committee was formed to study the feasibility. The verdict was, to put it delicately, not encouraging.

“I figured this was a winner, I just felt it in my gut,” said Hanson, unswayed. He took over the committee’s work because the venture needed “a decider.”

The idea moved forward to the first festival. “We were looking for 300 to 400 people,” he recalled. “That first year, we got 3,000. That’s when I knew I had a tiger by the tail.”

The festival has become a local fall behemoth and will draw an estimated 20,000 people over two days, Oct. 11 and 12. A pleasant surprise has been that, compared to the first festival in which attendees came from Washington, Maryland and as far away as even Chicago and California, more and more local people have flocked to it over the years.

“Gradually, it’s become a Lynchburg-Amherst-Central Virginia area home,” he said. “Our real growth has been in local people, people appreciating a good festival. People come out now and spend the whole day, maybe two days.”

Hanson always has relied on local talent for what is now the festival’s five stages, which are at the ends of what resembles an octopus layout. “It’s surprising how many good performing groups there are in the area,” he said. “The talent is great.” They started with mainstream rhythm and blues and it “took off like mad,” he said.

This year’s festival will have 150 vendors, said the winery’s marketing and business manager, Katie Meeks.

Simple as that sounds, so too is another idea for a summer festival, which will be borne of the renovation of the former Central Virginia Livestock Market, which will seat 800 people where the cow pens formerly were and 172 in an intimate indoor venue. Work began three years ago.

“I felt this could be the last legacy I could leave to the county” said Hanson, who says 20 garlic festivals likely will be enough for him. “That place is a diamond in the rough, I think.”

Hardly a garlic festival 2.0, this venue is envisioned as being constantly busy, with events year-round as well as a summer festival to fill the void of another in Nelson County that is defunct.

“I hope to have something going on weekly,” he said, and not just music. A wedding chapel is planned; meetings; seminars; food; and a vineyard. (Rebec Vineyards now buys grapes from nearly a dozen other growers.)

It’s far enough from neighbors so that it won’t bother them, although county officials have expressed concerns about traffic, he acknowledges, adding that growth is inevitable anyway.

“I think it’s going to be one of the biggest things in the whole Central Virginia Area,” he said.