Scenery is a strong point for Arizona’s three core winemaking regions, promising red rocks, desert vistas, and green valleys.
Courtesy of Los Milics Vineyards
A casual observer might think you’ve got to be crazy to make wine in Arizona, and having met some of the folks that do, that’s absolutely correct, in the best possible way. Blazing sunshine, desert climate, and high elevation drive some of the country’s most passionate and meticulous winemakers to cultivate obscure grapes and create innovative blends as intriguing and spectacular as the setting. Anyway, it shouldn’t come as surprise that Arizona is ripe for wine production: Spanish missionaries were planting vines here in the late 1600s.
“Scenery is one of our biggest strong points,” winemaker James Callahan says from behind the bar of Rune Wine’s off-grid tasting room overlooking its Sonoita vineyard. The wines are another, though in much more chill fashion: “Medium-bodied and easygoing, just like our temps,” says Zoya Vora-Shah, founder of the Wine Collective, a tasting room and wine bar in Old Scottsdale that specializes in Arizona wine. “We’re not trying to make a huge empty buttery chardonnay here. Our terroir does different things.”
Here’s how to navigate the state’s three main wine regions: the innovative high-altitude wineries of Sonoita, the close-to-the-source homegrown agricultural powerhouse of Willcox, and Verde Valley’s scenic tasting rooms, where the view is as lush as the malvasia bianca.
Located near the Mustang Mountains, the architectural casitas at Los Milics Vineyards are equipped with wine fridges.
Courtesy of Los Milics Vineyards
Sonoita
Seemingly pastoral and bucolic, the undulating high-altitude hills of Sonoita harbor fierce growing conditions that draw the most fervent local winemakers. “The Sound of Music without the twirling lady,” Pavle Milić of Los Milics Vineyards says of the golden grasslands rippling in the shadow of a quartet of purple mountain ranges. But this beauty also has brains.
Sonoita is Arizona’s oldest AVA, home to Callaghan Vineyard, where Ken Callaghan’s encyclopedic wine knowledge and three-and-a-half decades of research cemented the secret to Arizona wine: Great wine takes precedence over vogue varietals here in the land of mourvèdre, grenache, tannat, marsanne, and petite manseng.
Nearly as storied is Todd and Kelly Bostock’s Dos Cabezas. “They’re the type of people who do the right thing, even if they don’t get credit,” says Milić. And both their wine and the pizza at their Sonoita tasting room deserve credit, the latter graced with seasonal toppings and local touches, like pesto with chiltepin pepper (the only chili that grows wild in the USA).
Sonoita’s newer class continues to innovate and evolve, as at the off-grid Rune, Argentine-inspired Deep Sky Vineyard, and Los Milics, where the sculpture-like tasting room and restaurant mirror the rows of vines and reflect the craggy mountains, punctuating the other-worldly landscape.
Where to stay
Los Milics’s sleek little casitas, which feel profound under the big sky and looming Mustang Mountains, come equipped with a wine fridge (and half-bottle, naturally) and a king-size bed that drops from the ceiling by button.
Verde Valley sits about 15 miles from Sedona’s red rocks.
Photo by Moment of Perception/Shutterstock
Verde Valley
Set in a rolling green valley about 15 miles from Sedona is the state’s newest wine region, Verde Valley.
The uncrowned king of the majestic Verde Valley’s wine industry is Maynard James Keenan, once best known as the lead singer of the rock band Tool. The closest thing he has to a castle is Cottonwood’s Merkin Vineyards Hilltop Winery and Trattoria. A tram ferries visitors up to the farm-to-table restaurant overlooking a small vineyard, and the sprawling complex includes a 9,500-square-foot production facility, gelato shop, tasting room, greenhouse, and private dining experience featuring Keenan’s Jerome-based Caduceus Cellars.
The Verde River (and Keenan’s influence) flows down from Jerome’s art-filled old mining town to Clarksdale, where a quartet of winemakers at Chateau Tumbleweed, as the name implies, take a refreshingly light-hearted approach to winemaking. The nearby Southwest Wine Center at Yavapai College serves unique, small-batch wines made by students from the viticulture and enology programs using grapes from the 13-acre estate vineyard—as it grows a young industry.
Where to stay
Find non-cheesy Old West vibes and maybe a few ghosts in the somewhat faded glory of the Jerome Grand Hotel, perched above town in a historic former hospital from the town’s mining days, or lean into the Sedona side of the region at adults-only luxury resort Ambiente, where each glass atrium room reflects and merges with the red rock landscape outside.
A trio of tasting rooms, including Aridus Wine Company, sits along Willcox’s Railroad Avenue.
Photos by Todd Mowen/Sula Studios
Willcox
Big-flavored red blends imitate the warm wine regions of southern Europe in the pumping heart of Arizona’s wine industry, just 80 miles east of Tucson. Willcox, a town of some 3,000, grows the majority of the wine grapes for the entire state, giving visitors a down-to-earth tasting experience among the vines at places like 1764 Vineyards, where Vora-Shah calls the Pink Pool—a creative blend of picpoul blanc and syrah—one of her favorites.
In town, Railroad Avenue sets the tracks to a walkable array of tasting rooms, including Soaring Wines, the cozily elegant Aridus Wine Company, and Golden Rule Vineyards—where the pistachios grown alongside the grapes pair nicely with a petite verdot.
For a bigger meal, Mexican food is the move in Willcox, whether a breakfast burrito at Adolfo’s Taco Shop or dinner at La Unica Restaurant and Tortilleria, where the menu includes a list of Arizona-grown wines that pair with shrimp ceviche or pork tamales.
Where to stay
Remodeled motel Arizona Sunset Inn & Suites is a cute and casual spot right in the center of town, which is, importantly, walking distance from many tasting rooms. Or book a hut at Rhumb Line Vineyard’s Quonsets to sleep amid the vines and lavender fields.
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