The Arizona Wine Grower’s Association put on a wine tasting at the Tempe Festival of the arts this year featuring 12 Arizona vineyards. I was fortunate
Tempe Festival of the Arts, Mill Avenue
enough to be taken on a tour by the Executive Director of the AWGA, Rhonni Boss-Moffit. Rhonni also publishes Arizona Vines and Wines, a magazine about Arizona Wine Country. I arrived at 10am before the wine tasting officially opened to try and get some wine maker interviews, and it’s a good thing I did because by 11am there was already a lot of people there, and by 1pm the event was crammed with eager and adventurous wine drinkers! Right next to the wine tasting area was a stage with live Jazz music by Renee Patrick and Margo Reed. 
It was a beautiful warm spring day and a perfect setting for sampling the wines from the emerging Arizona Wine Industry. Arizona now has 39 licensed and permitted wine producers, which is significantly more than there were just a few years ago.
Weekly Wine Journal 