The vintner Christian Garvin — whose opening of a Funk Zone tasting room 20 years ago introduced the initial crowds to Santa Barbara’s now-buzzing waterfront neighborhood — has died. He was 51 years old, and passed away from health complications on September 30 in Christiansted, St. Croix, the U.S. Virgin island where he’d moved about a year ago.
In 2005, Garvin and winemaker Ryan Carr opened a cooperative winery called Cellar 205 on the corner of Yanonali and Anacapa streets. Santa Barbara Winery had been making wine across the street since 1964, but the neighborhood was still mostly full of industrial warehouses and undeveloped lots where artists worked and sometimes lived. It was almost entirely avoided by both locals and tourists.
“We were in our twenties, living in downtown Santa Barbara, and I always thought, ‘What if we had a winery downtown?’” Garvin told me for this 2011 article…