US: Custom crush operation opens at 'crucial time' for Arizona wine growers

(Azstarnet) - Arizona's newest custom crush facility will process between 170 and 200 tons of grapes this fall, making it one of the largest commercial winemaking facilities in the state.

Aridus Wine Company also will release the first vintages produced at the sprawling facility, housed in an old apple warehouse on the southeast end of Willcox's main street. The winery processed 40 tons of fruit for Carlson Creek and Pillsbury Wine Company in its inaugural production last August, and those wines should be ready to bottle and sell by October, said Aridus owner Scott Dahmer.

Dahmer said he expects to process five times that amount of fruit this year from at least 10 Willcox-area vineyards including Pillsbury, Zarpara Vineyard, Golden Rule Vineyard and Sand-Reckoner Vineyards. Carlson Creek could be the largest customer; the vineyard is considering sending Aridus part or all of its nearly 60-ton yield - three times the amount of fruit Aridus processed for the family-owned vineyard last year, said Robert Carlson.

"Aridus came by at a very crucial time for us," said Carlson, whose family started the 120-acre vineyard on the Willcox Bench in 2008. "We were partnering with a Northern Arizona winery to make our wine, but we had outgrown their capacity."

Dahmer invested $5 million to renovate and equip the 32,000-square-foot apple warehouse into a state-of-the-art crush facility. The Diemme crusher-destemmer set up on the crush pad can process as much as 4 tons of fruit at a time. The juice then sits in 2,500- to 5,000-gallon steel fermenting tanks in the fermentation room for a week or two before being stored in barrels in the sprawling, climate-controlled barrel room.

Barrels are aged at least a year for whites and up to 22 months for reds before the wine is bottled using a GAI bottling line imported from Italy. The machine fills, caps - screw top or cork - and labels as many as 100 bottles an hour.