Locally focused wine tasting room “Arizona Wine Collective” now open

Arizona-focused wine tasting room Arizona Wine Collective announced they will officially open on Tuesday, February 6.

The space at 4280 N. Campbell Ave., Ste. 155 in St. Philip’s Plaza previously housed Scordato’s Pizzeria.

“We’ve got a local cheese guy called Peace Love & Smoked Cheese doing smoked cheese,” said Pete Snell, who owns Arizona Wine Collective with his wife Jeanne. “As much as we can, we’re making everything Arizona-based.”

Snell spent the last year working at Callaghan Vineyards in Elgin, where he learned the business of making and selling wine.

AWC features eight wine taps, wines by the bottle and glass, as well as six Arizona beer taps. However, wine will be the main focus with six to eight rotating wineries on average. For the opening, they’re featuring 11 wineries.

“What we wanted to do, and felt was necessary and worked better, was to have a collective of sorts where you’re able to taste multiple Arizona wineries,” Snell said in a previous interview.

AWC will showcase the wines in a few different ways to help develop Tucson’s wine palate. In the weekly “Arizona Wine Challenge,” tasting flights will introduce non-Arizona wines to demonstrate how Arizona wines stand up to more well-known wine regions. For example, participants will have a blind tasting of an Arizona Syrah, a California Syrah, and a Washington state Syrah.

Arizona Wine Collective located at 4280 N. Campbell Ave., Ste 155. Operating hours are 2 – 8 p.m. Tuesday – Thursday, 2 – 9 p.m. Friday, noon – 9 p.m. Saturday, and noon – 8 p.m. Sunday. For more information, visit azwinecollective.com.