Arizona’s wine tourism industry has seen explosive growth during the past decade, and Scottsdale’s wine tasting rooms are a way into experiencing those locally grown wines.
Wine experience-driven visitor spending has increased 677% and wine-related employment 500% since 2011, according to a recent study of Arizona’s wine tourism conducted for the Arizona Office of Tourism by the Economic Policy Institute at Northern Arizona University.
This study sampled nearly 1,7000 people who either attended an Arizona wine festival or visited in-state wineries and tasting rooms, according to Josh Coddington, director of communications and public information officer for the AOT.
In Arizona, the three main wine-producing regions, federally designated as American Viticultural Areas, are Verde Valley, Willcox and Sonoita.
Regional wine fits into Scottsdale’s reputation for amazing restaurants, bars and luxury resorts, Coddington said.
“The Scottsdale area offers a great amount of wine tasting rooms that are operated by Arizona winemakers, and those experiences really attract people to the area,” stated Coddington. “People love authentically local experiences. That’s one thing that almost every visitor rates high on their scale that attract them to a place.”
More and more locals want to find ways to support local, small businesses, according to Melly Hernandez, manager of The Wine Collective of Scottsdale, which is also a woman- owned and operated business.
LDV Winery is a pioneer in Arizona wine, having received the 17th or 18th license in the state about 17 years ago, according to Peggy Fiandaca, owner and general manager of LDV Winery and past president of Arizona Wine Growers Association.
The state’s 156 wine producers today represent a 200% increase since 2011 when there were 52, according to the study.
The owners of LDV Winery chose to locate its only tasting room in Old Town Scottsdale specifically because of the large number of domestic and international visitors, the proximity to all the restaurants and resorts in the area and growing density of people who live within walking distance, Fiandaca explained.
“It just made perfect sense to us because that provides an incredible market of wine lovers,” Fiandaca said.
LDV Winery’s tasting room opened in Scottsdale about seven years ago, where about 90% of all its wine is sold now. The vineyards are in the high-altitude terrain of the Chiricahua Mountain foothills in Southeastern Arizona, producing about 3,000 cases per year.
There’s a high level of satisfaction with Arizona wine experiences from people who visited wineries and wine festivals, the study revealed. Experiences met or exceeded the expectations of 96% of survey respondents, a press release stated.
The surprise factor that so much wine is locally grown and sold in Arizona adds to the experience of visitors, Coddington added. People love the unexpected fact that there is a growing wine industry here.
“People are surprised to find that grapes can even grow in our state, and that fact kind of alludes to us having such a diverse geography here. It just makes people more amazed at our region,” Hernandez said.
The tremendous growth of Arizona’s wine industry can be attributed to several factors, the release stated. Those factors are increasing promotion of the state’s grape-growing regions and wine country tourism by AOT and others, development of the wine-industry workforce and proliferation of tasting rooms and visit-ready vineyards.
The Southwest Wine Center at Yavapai College is the only viticulture (grape growing) and enology (wine making) college program in Arizona, according to Tom Pitts, wine consultant and founding president of the Verde Valley Wine Consortium.
The study also examined how wine experience-driven travelers impact the regions they visit. Approximately 35% of all survey respondents said they used a wine festival as an opportunity to visit other nearby areas. Additionally, about 94% of festival goers indicated that they would likely recommend an Arizona wine festival to a friend.
LDV Winery currently has a sale of up to 50% off cases of wine through August.
We’d like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. MacKenzie Brower can be reached at mbrower@iniusa.org.
MacKenzie Brower Lead News Reporter | Town of Paradise Valley mbrower@iniusa.org
MacKenzie Brower has a Bachelor of Science in Journalism from Northern Arizona University and specializes in visual storytelling. She was previously the director of photography and Editor-in-Chief of The Lumberjack at NAU, breaking news intern for The Arizona Republic and column writer for FlagLive!
MacKenzie studied abroad in Prague at the beginning of 2021, where she practiced landscape and portrait photography. She is passionate about protecting the world’s environment and human rights and hopes to inform social change through reporting. You can find her portfolio at mackenziebrower.photoshelter.com.
By 
