Red wine, red rocks: wine tasting in Arizona

This past Saturday promised to be a perfect day for a road trip, so we decided to explore Arizona's wine country for wine tasting.

The Cornville exit is the best way to get
to Wine country from the I-17 highway

It's been a while. We first took a drive to the area way back around 2004, and before that we enjoyed our first wine-tasting trip to Southern Arizona in the very late 1990's. According to a recent newspaper story, however, our state's burgeoning wine industry is finally beginning to mature. I think I remember reading about some crazy dude first planting vineyards back in the late 1970's, but I didn't take it seriously then. I didn't even take it seriously again until a night at the then 4-star restaurant, "Mary Elaine's" in 1998, where we were offered exceptional wines from a Wilcox area winery called Dos Cabezas! Mary Elaines is no more, but the wineries are still here, thank you very much!

Now that it's time to start touting our local vintners to out-of-state friends and family, we thought it would be a good excuse to try out the most recent vintages — just to see if there has been any improvement, (wink wink, nudge nudge.) And because my grandfather kept a few barrels in production all the time, and most of our nearest family comes from California or Oregon, we want to be able to say we're well worth a visit not just because of our cool cacti and canyons, but because we have delicious local libations to offer, too.

We hit two wineries: Page Springs Cellars and Oak Creek Winery. We weren't disappointed. Of course, part of the magic is the trip and the locales, so we can't vouch for your experience if you just find a bottle on a shelf and take it home. Though some of the wines we tried won't be able to stand up against the very best of the best around the world, none were slouches. Not a one was unpleasant or hard to swallow ; ). All were unique, very pleasant to the palate and tasted of top-quality production standards.

Personally, we were in the mood for something rich, flavorful and reminiscent of the Fall harvest — our favorite for the day was "Sedona Woman" from Oak Creek Winery in Page Springs, a rich spicy blend that really went well with our cheese plate. But, having only tried two wineries, we're going to have to hold out our final votes for more trips north — and south!

Also, we didn't want to risk being under the influence while driving on this impromptu trip; I didn't trust myself in my usual role as designated driver because I'd be driving one-handed on curvy mountain roads. So, we decided that next time it would be fun to do the wine-tasting Bus Tour. Yes, they've got one here, too. That way we could DRINK the wine, instead of just TASTING it.

As a nice finish for our day trip, we headed over to Sedona for a hike at beautiful Red Rocks State Park. The scenery in Sedona is never disappointing, but on this day it was extra crisp and clear. The red striped bluffs were absolutely breathtaking from our vantage at the top of the trail. Wow, how I love the geology of my state!

Treat the following photos as a pictorial tour, sans narration, because this area surely speaks for itself. We started off at the state park visitor's center, hiked up to Eagle's Nest Viewpoint, then back down to the riparian area at the base of the bluffs, across Oak Creek and to the meadow. After burning off the wine and cheese calories consumed earlier, we treated ourselves to gourmet pizza pies in Sedona. Steve had just enough energy to drive us back to Phoenix, but really, it was a perfect way to end a perfect Saturday. (Click any photo to make it larger. Click your browser's back button to return here.)

What a great new way to top a wine-tasting trip. With the combination of some great wineries and the beautiful scenery of northern Arizona, our west coast friends and family should have plenty of new treasures worthy of their exploration next time they come for a visit. I can't wait to show them!

Nono was before his time: Wine tasting in the Salinas Valley

By now, most people have heard about the Napa and Sonoma valleys of Northern California. But, I bet you didn't know that the Salinas River Valley highlands in Monterey County, California is also a great place to find great wine. Steve and I had a chance to take a drive on the Salinas River side of the hills to visit four new wineries we hadn't visited before.

We thoroughly enjoyed every one. Best feature of all: we got to talk to the wine makers themselves, or at least a son or daughter of the winemaker. They all have their own stories, but a common factor, it seems, is that while they may be relatively new as wine makers go, they are not new to the area. Many were growing vegetable and fruit crops before the lure of the grape took hold. See Pessagno Winery.

They are so casual and welcoming here, we even walked in on one little ol' winemaker while he was still bottling: Puma Road/Ray Franscioni Wines. And another is a family who is Swiss-Italian and had been in this same valley for a very long time. See the website for Manzoni Estate Vineyards. We even got to share a few stories about our Nono's and Nona's (grandfathers and grandmothers in English)!

And then there was Joel Burnstein and Marilyn Remark of Marilyn Remark Winery with their two big retrievers, Hogan and Snead, (someone likes to golf!); we enjoyed talking with them long after closing time. The picture above was taken in one of their vineyards. On their website, Joel says of tasting wines from the Rhone Valley in France in 2001: "These vintages were from small vintners who sell every bottle locally to friends and family. We knew then the type of wines we had to try to make."

Some of the folks who are bottling now, are the second and third generation children of European immigrants. Many are getting back in touch with a part of life that seemed a distant past for them. It's no wonder--they were sitting on California gold! Turns out this area is very special when it comes to climate, weather, soil, and elevation--just the right mix for growing the right grapes and making great wines.

I wish my grandfather were alive to see how the making of wine has taken off in this area, so close to his home in Castroville. He used to buy his grape 'juice' from a grower in the San Juan Bautista area and he always had a few barrels cooking away down in the cellar. He may not have been nearly as accomplished a vintner as these folks, but he put just as much love into making his wine, and above all, loved to share it at the dinner table with guests. After all, he knew that good wine brings people together--and that's when he was happiest!