Spain's grapes in Arizona, and the price of the second loan

Four of the grapes behind Spain’s best-known red wines now grow in Arizona, most of them in the high grassland of Cochise County. It looks nothing like Rioja, and the vines seem not to mind.

Where they grow

Grenache, which Spain calls Garnacha, is the most planted of the four. In the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension’s survey of the 2025 harvest, it ranked second in the state by planted acreage, just behind Syrah, among nearly 80 varieties on about 700 planted acres, 532 of them harvested. Willcox, on the line between Cochise and Graham counties, was the largest producing area.

Tempranillo, the backbone of Rioja, and Graciano, the grape Rioja adds for sharpness, are both planted at the Aridus estate vineyard in the Chiricahua foothills near Pierce, at about 5,200 feet. Monastrell, the grape of Jumilla and Yecla, goes into a rosé that Merkin Vineyards bottles under its Spanish name from the Buhl Memorial Vineyard in the Kansas Settlement near Willcox, at 4,300 feet. The same vine turns up as Mourvèdre, its French name, at Page Springs Cellars’ Dos Padres vineyard in the Verde Valley, planted between 3,400 and 3,650 feet.

Why a desert suits them

These are grapes from hot, dry country. Monastrell ripens late and wants heat; in southeastern Spain it gets through summers that would stall a cool-climate variety. Garnacha has long been planted across Spain’s dry interior because it copes with very little water. Tempranillo takes its name from temprano, early, and in Arizona it lives up to it: the extension service’s viticulture newsletter observed in July 2025 that it ripens ahead of the state’s other red varieties. Graciano ripens late but holds on to its acidity, which is why Rioja uses it to sharpen a blend and why it earns a place where hot afternoons burn acid out of the fruit.

Altitude does the rest. Above 4,000 feet the nights run far colder than the days, which slows the loss of acid and keeps color in the skins. The complication is the summer monsoon. Its storms arrive in July and August, when red grapes are softening and coloring, so a variety that finishes early, or one that keeps its structure through a wet week, has the advantage over one that needs all of September.

The vendimia, from the other side

For a reader in Spain the same grapes point the other way, toward the vendimia and the seasonal work it brings. The union CCOO’s calendar of agricultural campaigns puts the first picking in August in Barcelona and Tarragona, where cava’s base wines come from. September brings the bulk of it: Ciudad Real and Toledo in La Mancha, Badajoz, Burgos, Valladolid and Zamora along the Duero, La Rioja and Aragón. In October picking carries on in Ciudad Real, Toledo, Burgos and Álava.

Pay is set by each province’s agricultural collective agreement, and when the money arrives counts for as much as the rate. La Rioja’s agreement for 2023 to 2025 has employers pay wages within ten calendar days of the following month, by bank transfer, so someone who starts picking in mid September sees a first wage in early October. The same agreement makes the employer provide or pay for lodging when the vineyard is more than 80 kilometers from the worker’s home, and pays the base wage on rain days to a picker who turns up and stays available. What it cannot cover is the stretch before that first transfer: the journey, three or four weeks of food, boots and gloves, and a room wherever the distance falls short of the threshold.

The free loan and the one after it

Spanish lenders of short loans often make the first one free. The offer is genuine, and it is also what the lender spends to acquire a customer, much as a tasting room pours the first glass for nothing. Nobody earns anything on a loan that costs 0 %. The money is made on the loans that follow, because a borrower who has been approved once and found it painless is the applicant most likely to come back.

So the loan worth examining is the one not yet on offer. In Spain Wandoo shows plainly how the two are priced. A first loan of €250 to €300 costs 0 % TAE if it is repaid on time. Later loans go up to €1,800 over 7 to 35 days, and the lender’s representative example gives their price: €100 for 35 days at a TIN of 463.55 % and a TAE of 4,530.48 %, or €44.45 in interest and €144.45 to repay. The loans are only for residents of Spain aged 18 or over with a DNI or NIE, a Spanish bank account and a regular income. Both sets of figures sit on the same site, and the second set is the one to read before applying for the first.

That gives a plain test. Take the free loan only if you would be content never to need the next one. A picker who borrows €250 for the trip to Logroño and repays it from the October transfer has paid nothing, and the offer has done what it said. The exposure sits in a short month: fewer days of picking than expected, a transfer that lands late, a repayment date that arrives first. Then the next loan is the one that costs €44.45 on every €100, taken with an account already open and an application that takes minutes. The true price of the free loan is that figure, weighed by the chance of needing it.

Borrowing to cover everyday shortfalls, rent or food in a month when the income has not come, is a different matter, and no free first loan changes it. The social services of the local ayuntamiento are free, and they can assess a household for emergency social aid, the one-off payments set aside for that situation.

Two names on the label

Back in Arizona the labels keep both traditions in view. Monastrell, Mourvèdre and Mataró are one vine, as Garnacha and Grenache are. Tempranillo carries more names still inside Spain: Tinto Fino in Ribera del Duero, Tinta de Toro in Toro, Cencibel in La Mancha and Ull de Llebre in Catalonia, while across the border in the Douro it becomes Tinta Roriz. An Arizona grower has to choose only one. A Willcox bottle calling itself Monastrell places itself beside Jumilla, and a Verde Valley bottle saying Mourvèdre has the southern Rhône in mind, where Page Springs Cellars takes most of its cues. Tasting rooms in both regions pour them side by side, and a day spent going from one to the next goes better with a driver who is not tasting.