Northern AZ Wine Tour

This past weekend I went with my cousin on a Northern Arizona Wine Tour. We were pleasantly surprised at the number of excellent wineries in this area. My only regret is we ran out of time once we hit Jerome! We're already planning our next visit North so we can share these wonderful places with the rest of our friends and family.

If you live in Arizona, or are visiting and need an activity for a day, I would highly recommend this tour! There are two important steps before you begin 1) Find a DD! And 2) visit Arizona Vines and Wines website to get a comprehensive map of wineries. They also list a few of the wineries that are in Southern Arizona.

We left Phoenix at 10am and we were at our first winery, Page Springs Cellars  by 11:30am. Our plan was to stay in Prescott for the night so we started with 3 wineries just East of Cottonwood/Jerome and made our way West until they closed the last shop.

We visited:

• Page Spring Cellars
• Oak Creek Vineyards
• Javelina Leap Vineyards
• Pillsbury Wine Company
• Arizona Stronghold
• Caduceus Cellars
• Jerome Winery (planned to visit but missed closing by 10 min)

Flight of Wine at Caduceus

  



Oak Creek Vineyards

 



Fruit and Cheese Platter

  



Pillsbury Wine Company





Merkin Vineyard Wine





Caduceus Cellars





Arizona Stronghold

 




Oak Creek Vineyard





Vino Tartare



 

All the wineries we went to had fantastic staff and great wine! We agreed that our favorite place was Page Spring Cellars. We had the combo flight there (both reds & whites) and all of them were so smooth. I'll admit that we're not wine connoisseurs of any sort but after visiting 6 wineries we just couldn't find anything as good as our first stop.

A few tips if you go on this tour:

- Start early. If your goal is to hit as many places as possible then be sure to be up there by about 11am. All the wineries we visited opened at 11am.

- Bring water! We went on one of the hottest days of the year. While almost all of the wineries had water we still couldn't get enough in between tastings

- Stick to the wine map. Some of the wineries up there don't have actual tasting rooms. All of the ones on the wine map are open to the public

- Ask questions about wines that aren't included in your flight. We ended up with a few extra tastings because the sommelier wanted to show off a different label

- Check out a vineyard tour at least once. Learning about how they make the wine is extremely interesting!

- Bring snacks! The wine and cheese platter in the pictures was something I put together and brought with us. We asked the winery if we could enjoy our own foods and they said "absolutely!". Our platter was much bigger than anything they serve there, and definitely a lot cheaper.

- Realize each winery has a tasting fee - we spent $5-$10 at each location. That will get you an average of 5 tastings at each place, and usually they'll give you a souvenir wine glass

- Have fun! Don't take yourselves too seriously. After all they're just grapes!