Page Springs Cellars Vineyard and Winery – Cornville, Arizona

Not far from Sedona’s red rocks and mystical vortexes is the small town of Cornville, Arizona, home to Page Springs Cellars Vineyard and Winery. Family owned, the winery is located along Oak Creek, a prime wildlife viewing site, and a fine spot to enjoy some of the vineyard’s Rhône style wines.

Opened in 2003, as befits a winery near the New Age ambiance of Sedona, Page Springs offers some options for visitors that go beyond its winery tours, tasting room wine flights and a gourmet tasting menu to pair with its wines. On weekends, Page Springs hosts local musicians and artists; and the winery offers both massage and yoga for its guests. Massages take place overlooking the vineyard.

But of course, it’s more the body of the wine than body massages that draw most visitors to this serene vineyard. Oenophiles will enjoy Syrah, Petite Sirah, Pinot Noir, and Rhone among other grapes. Traditional wine-making is key to vineyard owner Eric Glomski’s craft. The winery employs selective sorting and small-scale open-top fermentation, and only occasionally uses a rough filtration process on his varietals. Tom Vitron, who handles marketing for the winery, explains that “We like to have our reds in bins not only to allow heat and C02 out but to make manual punch downs easily accessible. For large batches, we have bins as large as three to five tons.”

The winery may be traditional in terms of its wine-making craft, but it’s cutting edge where eco-friendly wine-making is concerned: Page Springs is the first winery in Arizona that uses solar power in the wine-making process. Driven by the abundant sunlight in the region, Page Springs offsets his wine-making energy costs with a full solar installation. According to Vitron, “Eric felt the solar project made perfect sense. It’s part of our mission as stewards of our natural environment to save energy. Solar is a perfect off-shoot of what we’re doing, and it now supplies up to 86% of our power.”

And the wine itself? While the winery has crafted a variety of wines using Central California grapes and is currently selling wines made from grapes in both Arizona and California, its 2014 grapes “are virtually all from Arizona,” Vitron says. “We have some New Mexico grapes as well, which come from the same terroir as ours. As our vines mature, it’s very exciting for us to be using our grapes. Just three-quarters of a mile from the estate, our House Mountain vines are producing Pinot Noir and Rhone wines. Right across the creek from us our Dos Padre vines are producing our Syrahs. These are young vines, and they produce amazing fruit that tastes almost like a Petite Syrah.” Vitron notes that while Dos Padre had previously “not been a brand name for us, now it will be. People who visit us here can look right across the creek and see the vines producing more and more fruit. Both the yields and the quality have increased as the vines have matured, and we’ve trained our vines.”

Melissa Edwards, Assistant Tasting Room Manager, says the Page Springs’ most popular wines, both red and white, are the Vino de La Familia red and Vino de la Familia Blanca. The red wine has “a well rounded, nice smooth finish with delicious fruit tones. While the vintage we’re currently selling is part California grapes and part Arizona varietals, in 2014, it will be all Arizona grapes. The Blanca is light and crisp, a very aromatic blend that has notes of honeysuckle, tropical fruit, and citrus on the palette.” Characterized by the rich volcanic terroir of the region, these wines truly represents the flavors of Arizona.

Overall, the philosophy and wines of Page Springs are driven by the soil, sun, and climate of Arizona, as well as a willingness to craft wines traditionally from unique grapes.