Sipping boutique blends in the tasting room at Cornville’s Page Springs Cellars and mulling over what to sample next, it is easy to grasp the magnetism of Arizona’s wine industry for the 70 percent of visitors who average $71 on food and merchandise and spend $70 more to walk away with 3.3 bottles of the red, white or sweet.
Equally intriguing is the industry’s $37.6 million in direct, indirect and induced economic contribution, $5.9 million in indirect business taxes, 265 direct jobs and 140 indirect and induced jobs reported in the 2011 study for the Arizona Office of Tourism.
“The Arizona Wine Tourism Industry” was written by The W.A. Franke College of Business at Northern Arizona University (NAU) using survey data collected from visitors to the wine growing regions in Yavapai, Santa Cruz and Cochise counties from February through May that year. Nearly 60 percent of the 504 surveys were conducted in Northern Arizona.
The study’s typical wine guest is 46 years old, traveling in a party of three adults, usually with family and/or friends and boasting an average annual income of $88,149. Fifty-nine percent are from Arizona and 41 percent travel from out-of-state. The Arizonans are likely to be from Phoenix (21 percent), Scottsdale (9.3 percent) or Tucson (9.3 percent), while California and Wisconsin lead the out-of-state crowd.
Most guests visited a tasting room or vineyard, while smaller numbers stopped at a winery or attended a festival or wine-related event. Nearly two-thirds were on day trips and spent an average of $149 directly, along with another $44 in restaurant and grocery expenses. The overnight visitors comprising the remaining one-third of guests spent $370 on average, with about $140 of that on lodging or camping.
Arizona’s major grape growing regions are located at high desert elevations of 3,800 to 6,000 feet, where the warm days and cool nights provide a perfect climate for viticulture, the growing and harvesting of grapes. Three wine country trails entice the grape-loving tourist eager to sample the flavorful bounty of the state’s winemakers in Sonoita and Willcox, south and southwest of Tucson, and the Northern Arizona Wine Trail.
The Arizona Wine Growers Association (AWGA) website maps each region, including Verde Valley wine growers with facilities located in Old Town Cottonwood and the surrounding countryside. Listed are Jerome’s Caduceus Cellars, Cellar 433 and Passion Cellars; Main Street Cottonwood’s Fire Mountain Wines, Pillsbury Wine Company, Arizona Stronghold and Burning Tree Cellars; Alcantara Vineyard & Winery in Cottonwood; Clarkdale’s Chateau Tumbleweed; and Cornville’s Oak Creek Vineyards, Javalina Leap Vineyard and Page Springs Cellars.
The wine industry has revitalized Old Town Cottonwood, where investors and local businesses have restocked the community treasure chest with wine tasting rooms, cafes, antique stores, galleries, arts and entertainment. Though dubbed “the biggest little town in Arizona” in the late 1920s, things had gone quiet over subsequent years. The revitalization earned recognition for excellence in economic development by the Arizona Commerce Authority in 2012, the Governor’s Tourism Award that same year and the ninth slot in Lonely Planet’s Top 10 Places to Visit in 2013.
A pioneer in that revamp has been the family-owned Page Springs Cellars founded in 2004. Owner Eric Glomski has characterized the company as crafting wines that “express the unique character of Arizona’s high elevation landscape.” The winery was recognized by “WineSpectator” in 2013 as one of two “all-Arizona” grown and produced wines awarded a 90-point “outstanding” rating. This past March, online readers of Phoenix-based “Arizona Foothills” voted it Best Arizona Winery.
Producing small batch red blends from French, Italian and Spanish grapes, the winery is known for “boutique batch blend experimental wines” and a “trailblazing status of trying things that haven’t been done,” said Luke Bernard, assistant tasting room manager and off-site sales and marketing coordinator.
The company also makes wine for other growers with that volume of business varying by agricultural trends in a given year, according to Bernard. Skull Valley’s The Painted Lady, specializing in Gewurztraminer vintages, counts itself among the steady customers for which Page Springs Cellars opens its production facilities.
“It’s an awesome industry,” Bernard said, citing shared ownership and collaboration among vineyards. “It’s very symbiotic. It’s such a young industry. Everyone’s working together.”
The NAU report concludes that “Arizona wineries, vineyards and tasting rooms are a valuable tourism resource. Winemaking is an environmentally sustaining practice that helps preserve open space, rural communities and values in counties where agriculture has been in a process of decline… Arizona, like many other states, benefits from a wine tourism industry that attracts higher-income demographic groups infusing ‘new money’ into rural economies.”
A local study, “The Economic Contributions of Verde Valley Winemaking,” was issued in April 2011 by the Yavapai County Cooperative Extension in conjunction with the Verde Valley Wine Consortium. That report estimated the total of all economic activity in Arizona related to Verde Valley wine at nearly $25 million. At the time of the study, 78 acres of wine grapes had been planted and 14 vineyards were operating, some under the same ownership. The local wineries, vineyards and tasting rooms employed 124 people, including part-time and seasonal workers, with a payroll of more than $2 million and $6 million in 2010 sales.
The AWGA estimates that the state currently is home to more than 90 licensed and bonded wineries. The blossoming growth, income earning opportunities and financial benefits to Arizona and beyond have prompted Yavapai College to establish a Viticulture Certificate and a two-year associate’s degree in Viticulture and Enology (the study of wine and the making of wine). The program, on the Verde Valley campus in Clarkdale, includes a teaching vineyard, teaching winery, practicum with local vintners and hand-on experience from planting to pressing for 61 students this fall. Its new Southwest Wine Center ultimately will have facilities to support the production of 3,000 cases of wine a year, when awaited licensing permits its opening, according to Nikki Check, director and instructor of viticulture at Yavapai College.
Bernard, a three-year employee at Page Springs Cellars, described his own training as “experiential.” Although raised on a farm, he began with no knowledge of viticulture, wine making or wine serving. Including previous experience in vineyard management for a sister company, he quipped, “I didn’t study wine. I studied with it.”
He described the Yavapai College influence on the wine industry as “huge. I actually have worked with that program. The company I worked for before was in partnership with them, so I did some of the installations in [the Yavapai College] vineyards… There are [many] people studying in the program that were working within the industry. It’s extremely evident that there’s a direct flow coming straight out of that program, directly into the wine industry, which has proven successful.”
Learning and experimentation continue with another Page Springs Cellars “first” for Arizona wineries: a partnership (with Harmon Solar) for the installation of 375 solar panels at the Cornville vineyard. Anticipated to generate more than 85 percent of the winery’s energy needs and a 10 percent return on investment in its first year, the three-week implementation should be completed this month, the companies predicted.
Statewide, many vineyards are predicting another big crop and high quality vintage, according to Peggy Fiandaca, AWGA president. “If growth continues on this positive trajectory, the Arizona wine industry can be the next billion-dollar wine region like Washington and Oregon.”
Visit www.arizonawine.org and www.oldtown.org for more information.
By Sue Marceau, Flagstaff Business News
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