Cottonwood Part 5.

Excerpt from "Diary of an Unknown Vintner"

-Camp Verde, near Cottonwood, Arizona-

The harvest timing at Willcox, Arizona and in nearby California, was dependent on local conditions, weather, labor availability as well as grape sugar and color, so there was no set schedule in Camp Verde. About half of the grapes processed were grown by the same company that owned the winemaking operation. The remaining half of the crop was termed custom crush.

As is the case nationwide, the big market favorites chardonnay (The White) and cabernet sauvignon (The Red) passed through in abundance. The usual types more familiar to Virginians, merlot, cabernet franc, viognier and some syrah as well as the unrelated petit syrah, were also handled.

Arizona was a higher elevation above sea level, about four thousand to five thousand feet. Virginia vineyards were more in the eight hundred to twelve hundred feet MSL range. Arizona was blessed with a dry, sunny and long season climate with cool nights. Unlike Virginia, hot and dry grape varietals characteristic of Tuscany (Italy) and the southern Rhone Valley (France) were common in Arizona: sangiovese, Temperanillo, grenache and mouvedre.

Some vineyards in Arizona were cool enough for Burgundian pinot noir and German varietals (rieslings), although it remained to be seen which would find a permanent place in Arizona tasting rooms. The strong suit in Arizona included malvasia bianco, sangiovese and cabernet sauvignon. Varietals alien to this intern included counoise, teraldage, and vermentino, but these were not seen that harvest. Some Virginia winegrowers were currently experimenting with petit manseng, carmenere and rousanne as well as others that are rare on the East Coast like touriga nacional, and a personal favorite white for its aromatics, fiano. Zinfandel, rare in Virginia, was a primarily northern California grape and came frequently to Camp Verde from there for processing. At that point, malbec was as much a stranger to Arizona as back East.

One that had been tempting to plant back East was an Argentinian varietal called torrontes where it occupied the status as The White in Argentina much as malbec was considered The Red. Torrontes was aromatically reminiscent of the State Grape of Virginia, viognier.

The Arizona market seemed to favor blends as opposed to single varietal red wines characteristic of Virginia. In place of Bordeaux blend (cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, petit verdot and where available, carmenere and malbec), Super Tuscan style blends have done well commercially in Arizona. That meant basically the above Bordeaux blend on a significant base of sangiovese.

Sangiovese juice was a rich blood-red. Cabernet sauvignon as juice was of the deepest purple. Others like grenache was of paler complexion.

Custom crush meant that a vineyard owner who had no winery, no barrels or vats, no laboratory, can ship his grapes to Camp Verde and receive back unlabeled bottles of wine from his own grapes to which he can affix a label of his own choosing, say, with as picture of his Hollywood girlfriend on the face. The other key possession required was a State-certified liquor production license. A winery must have one although most stand alone vineyards do not.

Although the industry had its ups and down in both Arizona and Virginia, the number of retail tasting rooms had expanded faster than fruit supply from vineyard acreage.

So: voila! Finito and There you have it, as promised at least in outline.

Watch this space for additional details…