What it means
Arizona wine is wine from Arizona grapes, and when a Scottsdale server says it, they mean one of three places three hours from your table: Sonoita, Willcox or the Verde Valley. None of them is low desert. The vineyards sit between about 3,000 and 5,000 feet, where summer nights drop far enough to keep grapes from cooking. Scottsdale, at roughly 1,250 feet, grows citrus, not syrah.
You will hear the phrase as a category on a wine list (“we have an Arizona section”), as a challenge (“try the Willcox grenache before you order the Napa”), and as a neighborhood activity, because several wineries solved the problem of being remote by opening tasting rooms in Old Town, within a few blocks of each other along Marshall Way, Main Street and Stetson Drive.
The rooms, the bars and a walkable afternoon are in the wine tasting rooms guide. This page explains the words on the label.
Where you’ll meet it
On the all-Arizona list at FnB, in the Main Street Arts District on a Thursday ArtWalk, at Uncorked and the fine art and wine festivals, and on a day trip to Cottonwood and Jerome.
Where the word came from
The grapes came with the missions. The Jesuit Eusebio Francisco Kino reported making sacramental wine at his Mission Dolores in Sonora in 1703, though records suggest little winemaking in Arizona itself under Spain. Salt River Valley farmers made wine from the 1870s, and vineyards in the Verde Valley supplied the copper camp at Jerome.
Then Arizona went dry in 1914, five years before national Prohibition, and making wine stayed illegal in the state until new legislation in 1982. That gap is why Arizona wine feels new: the industry is younger than most of the resorts that pour it.
The restart was scientific. In 1973 Gordon Dutt, a University of Arizona soil scientist, planted experimental vineyards on the Babacomari Ranch near Sonoita, arguing that the high grassland soil resembled Burgundy’s. He opened the state’s first modern commercial vineyard there in 1979. Federal recognition followed in three steps. Sonoita became Arizona’s first American Viticultural Area on October 25, 1984. Willcox, on a high plain in Cochise County, followed on September 12, 2016. The Verde Valley, in Yavapai County, became the third on November 10, 2021.
An AVA is a federal map, not a quality grade. It lets a label name a place when most of the grapes grew there.
What it is not
A wine made in Arizona is not automatically Arizona wine. A winery can legally crush grapes trucked in from elsewhere, and only a label that names the state or an AVA tells you where most of the fruit grew. Look for Sonoita, Willcox or Verde Valley on the label, or ask. Nor is it a novelty from a Sedona gift shop; the best of it competes on national lists.
The fine print
Who grows what. Willcox is the state’s vineyard. A 2013 state vineyard survey, reported by the Arizona Farm Bureau, credited the Willcox region with 74 percent of all wine grape production and 950 planted acres statewide; later estimates put Willcox at about 85 percent. Its high plain, 4,135 to 4,700 feet, favors big Rhone and Spanish reds: syrah, grenache, mourvedre, tempranillo. Sonoita, at roughly 4,500 to 5,000 feet, is smaller and cooler at night, with more acidity in the glass. The Verde Valley is the newest and smallest, about 125 acres of vines at its 2021 recognition, with Yavapai College’s Southwest Wine Center training winemakers, and wineries such as Caduceus Cellars and Arizona Stronghold.
The Old Town connection. Most Old Town tasting rooms represent Willcox estates. The best-known ambassador was Merkin Vineyards, the Verde Valley winery of Maynard James Keenan, which poured an all-Arizona list on Stetson Drive from 2019 until it closed in April 2024.
The weather. The monsoon arrives near harvest, and Arizona growing seasons swing hard with it, which makes the question “what year?” worth asking in a tasting room. The staff usually have a story for every vintage.