Cottonwood Part 1.
Get Back, JoJo...
-September 11-
Cottonwood, Arizona
Some have expressed interest in this itinerant winemaker adventure.
A few spare moments today have provided an appreciated break to jot down impressions of this East Coast tenderfoot in the West.
Today is my first day off since arrival on August 21. With the shuttle schedule and various connections missed in Flagstaff, August 22 was my first day at the wine laboratory and it hasn’t let up since, running 24/7. The first wave of Arizona grape harvests is in a barrel ageing, with the next due from California tomorrow.
Surprising: when the word monsoon is mentioned, Viet Nam and India spring to mind. However. it is monsoon season here and it rains about five minutes every other day which does nothing to deter bright blue skies before and after.
A typical day begins at eight o’clock with the crash cart loaded with sampling instruments and a fresh data sheet. The facility is large, and some fifteen miles from the tasting room, in an industrial park on Route 260 between Cottonwood and Camp Verde.
Initially, my drive down from Sedona took about forty minutes through some of loveliest high desert, descending about twenty-five hundred feet from the reed rocky outcroppings near Sedona, southwest into the Verde Valley. En route most days for the first ten days, there were hot air balloons in the sky by six-thirty in the morning, and highways traffic was never an issue.
The aroma of the high desert sandalwood and mesquite, and the occasional prairie hen or road runner were a shock at first. And lizards, if the eye is quick enough to spot them. Haven’t seen rattlers they tell me are here. The vistas of this target-rich environment are distracting to anyone with a camera. The geologic splendor of Sedona was exhausting. So many russet sunsets; so little time.
From Sedona, the mountains on the far side of the Verde Valley are marked with a single large white letter that must be a dozen feet high and visible from twenty miles away. Above Clarkburg, the letter C. Above Jerome, Arizona, the letter J, both formerly copper mining communities of the Wild West.
Most of modern Cottonwood consists of strip malls and developments at the intersection of Routes 89A and 260. To the north bis Old Town Cottonwood, a four-block main street that is home to all sorts of cow town single story buildings and a few classic hotels that were frequented in different eras by Hollywood’s best, John Wayne, Mae West and Elvis Presley. The celebrities were in town to film western from 1946 on. The cult classic Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, 1969) was filmed in Cottonwood, although it is good to look at the disc before visiting to prepare for that time travel moment.
At the head of Main Street are two buildings that are rebuilt 1940s era Quonset huts, the corrugated steel domes used by the military to house aviation cadets. These now house The Glitter Gallery. Across Balboa Street is Larry’s Antiques which has an impressive collection of precious metal: 1930 era car chassis and fenders, wooden farm equipment and a surprising number of Old West wagons and wagon wheels in mint (old) condition at reasonable prices.
It is not surprising to find military surplus as one of several shops inside the Quonset hut.
Where there were military installations as in Cottonwood, there are usually a few pieces of aviation hardware around in dusty attics, junk shops and in salvage yards.
Naturally, this visitor scours the shops for old aero engines and parts but came up empty, save a few small wooden Piper J3 propellers from 1944. The wagon wheels are plentiful but he would risk being shot at high noon were he to ship a wheel, or an entire 1910 freight wagon, home to Virginia, not by the Arizona locals but by a wonderful and indulgent lady back East.
Old Town’s Old West store fronts now house wine tasting rooms and book shops: there must be eight in a village block. The tasting room names are instantly recognizable from grapes processed at nearby Camp Verde. For example, Sam Pillsbury the noted film director and heavy metal rock star Maynard (“Tool”; “Pulsifer”) Keenan.
At the end where Main Street curves up toward Clarkburg and Jerome, is the OId Town jail. Now empty, maybe an art gallery renovation in progress from the looks of it. A short walk from Old Town is the Hippie Emporium. Some visitors would instantly recognize the aromas therein, and day-glo posters of Jimi Hendrix.
The hippie ambience of Cottonwood and Jerome is evident in many vintage, mint condition and hugely expensive VW Beetle restorations parked in the streets near wine tasting rooms, and the dudes and chicks sporting long hair gone grey.
Not to say all the latter-day hippies are that old. The vintage music and VWs seem to find favor among the young who can afford them. Back to nature remains a theme of currency among folks in Sedona and in Cottonwood-Jerome. Local winemakers speak of wine for the people.
Right on, Man.
A few miles west and up a steep grade is Jerome, a once-thriving hillside copper mining community complete with saloons and houses of joy, a ghost town by the 1930s that was repopulated by bona fide hippies in the 1960s, and is now an artist colony that deserves a chapter of its own. There is even a nexus between politics and wine: the Mayor of Jerome and state viticulturalist are one and the same, and resident in Jerome.
Another cottage industry that thrives in Cottonwood deals in art, jewelry and gem collecting. The affordable native Indian rugs are generally imports from the other India. Genuine Native American textiles can be had at an order of magnitude more expense, but the craftsmanship is exquisite. While tourists are pricing vacation mementos, there are winery outlets next door, and Main Street hotels founded in the 1880s are expensive. Less expensive accommodations are taken by construction crews short term.
There seem to be about six geographic clusters of winery and vineyard activity statewide, with an annual state production of about 100,000 cases. Arizona Stronghold Winery processes about one-third of all grapes in the state as well as grapes imported from nearby California where production and real estate costs are significantly higher.
The industry has a journal called Arizona Wines and Vines, produced by local land baron Josh Moffit who appears to be closing in on a monopoly in the vineyard real estate gold rush.
(…to be contiunued..)