Last year, with construction on the Clarkdale Town Park ongoing, the annual Verde Valley Wine Festival — which is usually a fixture of the grassy area in the center of Clarkdale’s downtown — was moved to the backyard of the Clark Memorial Clubhouse. With construction completed, the festival returned to its home in the park for a day of local wines, fine dining and music.
With the event back in the park, attendees were able to luxuriate in a spacious field on the mostly sunny afternoon of Saturday, May 11. Customers flitted from tent to tent, finding not only wine and food to go with it, but also beers and liquors, lotions and other local businesses sponsoring the event. You could get gourmet pizza from the Merkin food truck or fresh-made tater tots from the Square Root Burger truck out of Flagstaff. Morsel bakery brought delicious red wine cupcakes and sugar cookies molded into the shapes of wine bottles for just the occasion. A cohort of small, adorable rescue puppies wandered around the field wearing coats that demanded “Adopt me,” while local groups Erik Teichmann, What’s The Big Idea and the Solomon Trio played soothing light jazz under the gazebo.
But the true stars of the festival were of course the wines. Local wineries like Merkin Vineyards from Cottonwood or Stronghold in Camp Verde shared the park with wines from all over Arizona. Even most of the Verde Valley wines grow their grapes down south near Wilcox, giving them that unique Arizona taste.
“It’s ours. I think that’s a big deal,” festival director David Baird said of Arizona’s wine style. “You’re going to find a lot of really cool nuances in Arizona wine due to our temperature. The more structure, the more struggle that these grapes go through, the higher quality of the wine and the better characteristics that are uniquely Arizona. It’s worth being present for.”
“We’re a lot different than California,” Mitch Levy of Burning Tree Cellars said. “We’re more fruit driven, with different varietals, rather than mass producing the same bottle of wine. Most of the wineries are boutique wineries — we all have different styles. We all have our ownfollowings.”
Those who wanted to explore those different varieties had a lot of options to choose from, with 17 different wineries having booths, including newcomers like Heart Wood Cellars, alumni of the Yavapai College Southwest Wine Center program.
This year, the festival made more of an effort to get attendees to spend time in the area, including shuttles that allowed people to not worry about driving after drinking several glasses and a two-day “glamping” option, where visitors spent two nights in luxury tents alongside the Verde River at the Lower Tapco entrance point.
“It’s nice to be exposed to different tasting wines,” said Diana Green, who came with her husband Bob to the event from Prescott Valley.
“The variety of ways the wineries develop the wine — it develops the taste differently from the way Oregon or California taste,” Bob said.
The Prescott Fine Art and Wine Festival was held on the same weekend, but the Greens said that for the past few years, they have much preferred coming to the Verde Valley for the festival in Clarkdale instead.
“This one’s more congenial,” Diana said. “Everybody’s happy. You get to talk to everyone and discuss the wine.”
