Verde Valley wineries and tasting rooms, town by town

The Verde Valley lies about a hundred miles north of Phoenix, a basin cut by the Verde River and fed by Oak Creek, with Sedona’s red rock at its northern rim and the Black Hills to the west. Since December 2021 the grape-growing part of it has been a federally recognized wine region in its own right. Nobody could call it large. The petition behind that recognition counted 24 commercial vineyards on about 125 acres and 11 wineries, and a visitor can cross the whole valley by car in well under an hour.

What follows is a list by town, as the valley stood in September 2024. Tasting rooms open and close more often than vineyards do, and opening hours in particular change with the season, so treat every entry as a pointer and check the business’s own page before driving out.

Page Springs and Cornville

Page Springs Road leaves State Route 89A between Sedona and Cottonwood and runs south along Oak Creek toward Cornville. A couple of miles of it hold the densest cluster of estate wineries in the valley.

• Page Springs Cellars has farmed beside the creek since 2003 and built its name on Rhône-style wines from Syrah, Petite Sirah, Grenache and Mourvèdre.
• Oak Creek Vineyards and Winery is a small family-owned estate on the same road.
• Javelina Leap Vineyard and Winery, at 1565 North Page Springs Road, crushes, ferments and bottles on the property and handles around 60 tons of Arizona fruit.
• D.A. Ranch dates from 2008 and has a little over nine acres under vine, marked from the road by a red barn.
• Cove Mesa Vineyard runs a small tasting room on the same stretch.

Page Springs Cellars has seating on the bank of Oak Creek itself, and a couple of its neighbors pour outdoors under mesquite shade. The estates sit low along the creek. Cold air slides off the surrounding high ground at night, so the valley floor cools sharply after dark even in July, and the region’s federal petition counted spring frost on low ground among the risks growers work around.

Old Town Cottonwood

Cottonwood’s old commercial strip on North Main Street is the easiest place in the valley to taste several producers without getting back in a car. The Old Town association’s 2024 directory listed these wine rooms along it, among a number of bars and bottle shops:

• Arizona Stronghold Vineyards, 1023 North Main, pouring wines grown in Cochise County far to the southeast.
• Merkin Vineyards Osteria, 1001 North Main, with a second Merkin room, the Hilltop, at 770 Verde Heights Drive.
• Four Eight Wineworks, 816 North Main, which works with Northern Arizona fruit.
• DA Vines Vineyard Wines and Bistro, 705 North Main, the town outpost of a micro-vineyard on Oak Creek in Page Springs. It is a separate business from D.A. Ranch despite the similar name.
• Rubrix Wines, 1040 North Main.
• Tantrum Wines, 918 North Main.
• Small Batch Wine and Spirits, 1044 North Main, open by appointment.

Because so much Arizona fruit comes from the southeast of the state, a flight poured in Cottonwood may hold as many Willcox grapes as Verde Valley ones. The label says which. A wine that names the Verde Valley must take at least 85 percent of its grapes from inside the region’s boundary. One labeled simply Arizona needs 75 percent from the state, so the two words on a label mean quite different things about where the fruit grew.

Clarkdale

Clarkdale was built as a company town for the copper smelter that served the Jerome mines, and it has two stops worth planning around.

The Southwest Wine Center sits on Yavapai College’s Verde Valley campus at 601 Black Hills Drive. Opened in 2009, it teaches viticulture and winemaking, farms a 12.95-acre estate vineyard, and pours only wines its students made on site. It is one of the few places where a visitor can taste a teaching program’s work next to the vines it came from.

Chateau Tumbleweed occupies a hillside on the Clarkdale stretch of the highway, at 1151 West State Route 89A, with a working winery visible from the tasting room and a long view back across the valley.

Jerome

Jerome, the former copper camp on Cleopatra Hill, sits well up the Black Hills, its streets far above the 3,800-foot contour that the region’s western boundary follows to leave those steep slopes out. The town still pours a good deal of the valley’s wine. Caduceus Cellars keeps its tasting room at 158 Main Street, and Passion Cellars and the Original Jerome Winery are both within walking distance on the same steep streets. The climb on 89A from Clarkdale is steep and winding, no road for a driver who has been tasting.

Camp Verde and the lower valley

South of Cottonwood the valley opens toward Camp Verde, and the wineries here are farther apart.

• Alcantara Vineyards, 3445 South Grapevine Way, stands where Oak Creek meets the Verde River. The vineyard dates from 2004.
• Clear Creek Vineyard and Winery is on State Route 260 on the Camp Verde side of the valley.
• Salt Mine Wine has a tasting room at 536 West Salt Mine Road in Camp Verde.

Getting around

State Route 89A strings Sedona, Cottonwood, Clarkdale and Jerome together, and State Route 260 links Cottonwood with Camp Verde. Outside Old Town Cottonwood the stops are spread out, and a day that takes in more than one town means driving, so settle before setting out who will drive and will not be tasting, or book one of the local tour operators that run the circuit. The valley’s own wine trail prints the same advice on its map.

Hours vary more than visitors expect. In 2024 some Old Town rooms stayed open until nine on Friday and Saturday nights, while others closed two weekdays or opened by appointment only. Summer afternoons on the valley floor can pass 100 degrees, while nights can drop more than 30 degrees below the daytime high, so a jacket belongs in the car on an evening visit even in August.