Arizona Wines- Ready for Prime Time
Several years ago friends visiting us at our Arizona home brought Mrs. Wine Guy and I a bottle of Vino del Barrio from Page Springs Cellars as a gift. The wine was bottled in Arizona and made from grapes made in Arizona. Prior to this I did not know that you could grow grapes in Arizona let alone make wine. I had never tasted an Arizona wine, was not looking forward to it, and was more than a bit surprised when the Vino del Barrio did not suck. That experience motivated us to make several wine tasting trips to Arizona wineries to dig a bit deeper. At first there were very few wines that we would classify as outstanding (a Barbara produced by Javelina Leap Winery comes to mind), several were drinkable, and several more that had some serious flaws and had a way to go to catch up to wines from the more established wine regions. After each subsequent trip we found more wines outstanding and drinkable wines but still found several that were still ...