Granite Creek Vineyards, Chino Valley AZ

Granite Creek Vineyards located in Chino Valley, AZ is an outlying winery. I mean outlying. We were not sure what we expected, but this felt like the middle of a rural neighborhood. Not bad, just a bit unexpected. The vineyard uses organically farmed granite soil and pure well water to develop their grapes.

Granite Creek is a large venue with plenty of outdoor seating and a small tasting room. This would also be a great venue for a wedding or party of some type. It really is beautiful and plenty of space.

Since we went shortly after the re-opening from COVID-19 closures, we were interested to see how the process would work. They have the tasting room closed inside but have outside walk up windows for your orders. They have a small bamboo plate and they put your tastings in four small plastic wine cups. I thought it was a creative way to follow all of the new rules and expectations due to COVID-19.

Granite Creek Vineyards Menu Summer 2020

On this day we sampled four reds, starting with the Oly Vine Concord, a sweet wine, which was not to my taste at all. Too sweet for me, I can only taste kool-aid for this one.

I quickly moved on to the 2016 Grenache, which is an Aridus Vineyard wine. I do enjoy their Grenache and I am not much of a Grenache lover. We are not sure if they normally carry Aridus, if it was a feature wine, or if they just offered whatever they had. They were very busy and we could not chat much due to the line of folks trying to get wine.

Then I had the Sunset Red, 100% Syrah. It tasted good, but nothing outstanding. I love a Syrah and most often I have a lot to say. I might have been distracted by the large number of people at this event, the band or the ants crawling all over the table where my wine was. Either way, it was not tasty enough to pull me into it.

I ended my tasting with the Casa Magonia 2017 Merlot-Malbec blend. This was my favorite by far. You could taste both the Merlot and the Malbec, separately and together on the finish. If you go for a red, this is the reason to go here. You can skip all the other wines and go straight for a glass of this.

This is pretty far for us and we likely would not drive up here just for this place, but it is a great venue. If it is a nice day and you are looking for a day trip, pack a lunch and settle in. They offer live music, but I am not sure how often they do that, so check their website or Facebook. Get a bottle of wine, some great photos and brag about the relaxing afternoon you had.

Be sure to check out tomorrow's feature on DA Ranch. You can read yesterday's article on Del Rio Springs Vineyard, or see all of our Sippin’ September articles here.

Living, loving, drinking, and traveling through life.

— Taunya