Garlic Grower/Garlic Festival

It's a truth shared by both farmers and food consumers, grocers and gourmets:  if you want to promote a product, put on a festival!  Now, it doesn’t work for every commodity, but there’s one remarkable success story in northern California.  That's where, nearly thirty years ago, garlic growers got together with local lovers of that scented herb.  The result - a world famous food fair; considered a model of successful marketing. The Gilroy Garlic Festival started in 1979 as a modest event to mark the end of the local harvest.   Today, it’s one of California’s biggest food festivals. Each year, on the last weekend in July, more than 130-thousand salivating citizens head to this small town south of San Francisco for a three-day homage to a pungent plant. A plant that’s actually a kind of lily, and a close cousin to the equally aromatic onion.  The only rule here, whatever you serve and sell, it’s gotta have garlic.  The food offerings are endless, exotic, even, eccentric. You’ll find garlic sausage, garlic pickles, minced Garlic, pickled garlic, even garlic ice cream!

Jennifer Malfas has come to the festival from Orland Park, Illinois.  She’s competing in a garlic recipe cook off. Jennifer says her specialty? “Oh Baby prosciutto-wrapped, roasted garlic, rosemary and feta cheese stuffed mushrooms.” Seven other chefs are competing. Jennifer says garlic is the key, “You can take almost anything and put garlic in it and make it taste better can’t get much better than that.”  And she adds, “More and more evidence is coming out that garlic is good for you. All we’re doing is catching up to the rest of the world, and the rest of the world’s been using garlic forever.”

Don Christopher, one of the festival’s founders, admits the festival has been a boon for his business. You see, he’s the biggest fresh garlic grower in the U-S. From just ten acres in 1956, today Christopher Ranch raises thirty-five hundred acres of garlic across California’s central coast and valley. Each year, Don donates two tons of fresh garlic to the festival.

It’s a generous gift but just a fraction of the 60 million pounds grown by Christopher Ranch each year.  All told, California produces 90-percent of the nation’s fresh garlic, about 110-million pounds.  An equal amount is imported, mostly from China. Like onions, garlic grows underground.  Don says, “We plant the individual cloves from the garlic, so we crack the bulb, take the cloves and plant them in September and October.  And just like a baby, nine months later, we have a bulb of garlic and it’s ready for sale.”

A machine cuts the garlic from its roots but it’s clipped and harvested by hand. The bulb’s outer skin is removed at the processing plant. It’s weighed and graded. Some bulbs are cracked and peeled, and the cloves packed into plastic containers; other bulbs are packed fresh into boxes for shipment worldwide.

Back at the Gilroy festival, there’s music and food and lots of it.  And, what’s become quite the crowd pleaser: Local chefs sauté scampi and calamari with garlic, wine and hot olive oil splashed into the pan with a fiery flourish.
 
All this fire, food and fun have more than a frivolous purpose.  Almost everyone here is a volunteer, and millions of dollars are raised for local charities. Organizers say that’s the secret for success for any grower considering a food fair to promote a commodity.

Don Christopher says, “What they need is make it a non-profit business, then you’ll get the news media to help you.  You have to have a fun item, if it’s not fun you’ll have a hard time selling it.”

Back at the cook-off, Jennifer Malfa’s finished making her prosciutto-wrapped garlic stuffed mushrooms, and it’s up against everything from pork tenderloin to lobster-garlic soup.

The judges sample each of the 7 garlic filled culinary delights and announce the winner, “One thousand dollars and first place award goes to: Oh Baby Prosciutto garlic wrapped mushrooms. Jennifer Malfa! ”

Garlic Fun Fact
There are more than 300 varieties of garlic grown worldwide. The ancient Egyptians revered garlic and placed clay models of garlic bulbs in the tomb of Tutankhamen.

Gilroy Garlic Festival