When people think of Arizona, they usually don’t think of wine. Desert? Yes. Scorching heat? Yes. Did you come? Not that much.
Now, you can offer wines from the Grand Canyon State in your restaurant. And they are not for cooking. The best way to keep customers coming back is to create memories they will talk about forever. Show them something new, including wines from the up-and-coming region of Arizona.
Andrew Stover, a sommelier at Oya restaurant in Washington, DC, who has been selling Arizona wines for more than two years, says consumer expectations for Arizona wines run the gamut.
“We get all kinds of reactions to Arizona wines, from Arizonans excited to see the wines outside their home to guests surprised that they would put Arizonan wine anywhere in between,” says Stover. “Skeptics don’t have much to say once they put it in their mouths. It really draws attention because it’s an alternative to Chardonnay.”
Oya restaurant sells about a case a week of Arizona Stronghold Vineyards’ Tazi white blend (Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Malvasia Bianca, Pinot Gris and Riesling) which is served by the glass. Stover says that wine pretty much sells itself. “People gravitate toward local, off-the-beaten-path wines,” she says. “It’s great for people who like rich Chardonnay, but want to get out of that box. It’s a full-bodied, creamy wine with tons of fruit characteristics. It’s not about the oak flavors, it’s about rounding out the flavors of Grapes. .”
Paula Woolsey, CSW, national sales manager for Arizona Stronghold, says the wines are available in 35 states, but they weren’t available in California until earlier this year. The largest market outside of Arizona is Calgary, Alberta. Arizona Stronghold is in its fifth crop and growing. Sales have been steadily increasing 100 percent annually for the past four years. According to Woolsey, sales will continue to grow another 50 percent this year.
And to what do you attribute your growing success to this new frontier? “No offense, but who needs another California Chardonnay?” explains Woolsey. “People’s expectations are very low. They compare the wines to what they’ve had in Michigan. They don’t even know how to react.” She, like Stover, says it’s a great alternative to California Chardonnay, which is a saturated market.
Arizona Stronghold focuses on organic and sustainable wines. The vines are planted at high altitudes, conditions similar to those in Argentina. Arizona has the second largest diurnal change, or the most extreme variation in temperature from daytime highs to cool nights, outside of Argentina.
The strengths of the areas are highlighted in blood in wine, a documentary about Maynard James Keenan (vocalist for Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer) and his vineyard, Arizona Stronghold, in Verde Valley, Arizona, with Eric Glomski, a former landscape ecologist. It was launched on February 19, 2010 to promote Arizona as a quality wine producing region.
This eye-opening documentary focuses on Keenan’s passion as a winemaker, planning his musical tours of the vineyards. As a pioneer in the region, Arizona Stronghold faced many challenges early on, including violent weather and pests such as deer and even wild boar. Although they still face some of the same challenges, they have been able to find solutions for most.
Arizona, as a wine region, baffles most wine critics, but it has an optimal climate and soil. The soil rich in volcanic debris and limestone in Verde Valley is similar to that found in southern Sicily. Critics and writers, such as Wine Spectator’s James Suckling, are used throughout the film, each bringing their own particular insights into both the wine industry and the burgeoning culture of Arizona.
According to Ricky Young, regional sales manager for Quench Fine Wines Ltd., the company’s sales have increased by 25 to 30 percent in the last three years. Quench Fine Wines Ltd. is the key distributor of Arizona wines in Arizona and represents three wineries: Arizona Stronghold, Page Spring Cellars and Dos Cabezas. Quench has 130 national wineries and 20 importers with more than 2,100 selections from around the world. Arizona Stronghold, with 15 selections, is their second best seller.
“With a company that sells about $11 million a year, that’s really good,” Young says. “It’s a great partnership that we’ve formed. It shows that the community in this state has driven the success of Arizona wines.”
Arizona has seen one of the fastest growing wine markets in the US. In 2006, the area was home to just a dozen wineries with just three tasting rooms. Today, there are 62 wineries throughout Arizona, a five-fold growth rate in five years.
The Arizona wine country is one of the oldest in the country and is believed to have been first settled by Spanish settlers in the 16th century. But Arizona’s wine industry faced many challenges along the way, including prohibition and Pierce’s disease, caused by a vine-killing bacterium. Arizona came out of Prohibition five years after the rest of the country. It was awarded its only American Viticultural Area (AVA) in 1984-Sonoita, located in southeastern Arizona, south of the city of Tucson.
According to Woolsey, it was even illegal for a priest to serve wine at communion prior to 1984. In May 2006, the Arizona Legislature passed a bill to end Arizona’s ban on direct interstate sales of wine.
Arizona now has two major producing regions in addition to Sonoita. The Willcox area of Cochise County was the second area to join. And now Valle Verde is the third region for the cultivation of grapes. The elevation of these vineyards ranges from 3,800 feet to nearly 6,000 feet, allowing for pleasantly hot days and cool nights during the grape growing season. These climatic conditions are similar to those of Mendoza, Argentina and Walla Walla, Washington.
Arizona Stronghold Winery isn’t the only entity revolutionizing Arizona wines. Yavapai College will soon be one of only three universities in the United States with an oenology program that has a wine-producing vineyard.
In 2010, Merkin Vineyards sponsored the planting of an acre of vines. On May 5, 2012, the university planted three more acres of vineyards and will launch a three-year associate’s degree in oenology this fall modeled after the University of Walla Walla program in the Yakima Valley. The oenology program at Yavapai College began in 2009 with just two classes: wine tasting and viticulture.
According to Nichole Check, Yavapai College’s director of viticulture since its inception, the demand for grapes is so high in Arizona that the university was forced to plant its own vineyards. Over the next few years, the viticulture program will plant up to 18 acres to provide enough fruit for the 3,000-box facility that will break ground in early 2013.
“This is the biggest thing Yavapai College will ever do,” says Check. “The university, in addition to training skilled labor, offers an annual symposium where we bring in different speakers to touch on different topics. This is another way that the university has provided resources to boost the industry in quality.”
Check has worked in the Arizona wine industry for a decade, including five years at Merkin Vineyards. “It was a painful experience at first,” she says. “The pioneers put a lot of effort into viticulture, and it really paid off. I’ve watched the wines go from pretty mediocre to wonderful over the last 10 years.”
No matter how you look at it, this is an exciting new chapter in American wine history. Where before it would have been far-fetched to suggest that the grapes could grow in the Southwest, producers like Arizona Stronghold, Dos Cabezas Winery and Page Spring Cellars and the rest of the cutting edge are rewriting the script. Arizona can only continue to improve with the resources that flood the region.