LDV Winery [January 2022]

Happy New Year and welcome back to the Scottsdale Wine Trail!! Now I have been on this particular wine trail multiple times, but I have also been to many of the wineries independently. Key stops along the trail include… Aridus Wine Company, [which I bumbled through in last weeks blog.. LOL] Arizona Stronghold Vineyards, Carlson Creek Tasting Room, LDV Winery Tasting Room, Merkin Vineyards, Salvatore Vineyards Tasting Room, and The Wine Collective of Scottsdale. Now, a couple of these places I have already talked about, and the others will be coming up in the future!!

You can see the wine trail passport in the photo below, so let me explain how it all works. When you get to your first winery, you pay five bucks to receive a physical or digital pass that gets you $2.00 off wine tastings at other participating wineries. I’m not sure how the digital one works but hello... why wouldn’t you get the physical passport since it’s so totally cool!? Haha!! Anyways, then they place a stamp in your passbook once you’ve visited. It does not need to be completed in one day. I mean, why rush a good thing?? I've hear that some locations even give out a free gift once the all the stamps are collected!!

I usually don’t start right off the bat with the winery name, but LDV Winery is named after the owners, Petty Fiandaca Lawerence, [the “L”] and Curt Dunham Lawerence. [the “D”] They are better known as Curt & Peggy, the cutest little married couple, together for over two decades!! [does this sound like any other cute little couples who may work together!? Haha!!] Curt is the winemaker and Peggy is the brand manager. They produced their first vintage in 2009, and consider this wine adventure to be their "second career" after operating an urban development company [yet again together.. awww] in their earlier years.

Curt’s love for wine was peaked with a single bottle of 1974 Cabernet, purchased by his parents in Napa Valley. He found it intriguing that “a grape could taste like blackberries, cherries, coffee, and chocolate” all at the same time. Peggy’s story is a little bit more interesting to me. Her very Italian family emigrated from Sicily to an Italian borough in a Chicago neighborhood. The kicker... her grandfather was a well-known Kentucky bootlegger during Prohibition, William Hogan!! She took a "sidestep" from her families heritage onto the road of legal wine production. HA!! Speaking of family... check out my work daughter, Hayley's bridal shower at LVD in the photo below!! [Love!!]

LDV’s vineyard is location in southern Arizona on roughly 40 acres near Ash Creek. I want to take your attention back to the first photo. Do you see of the wall hanging with three circles, about mid-way up the right side? Well, to LDV these symbols signify the close relationship between farming and winemaking. The first circle honors the original Native American farmers of Ash Creek, who mostly grew squash. The second represents the next generation of farmers, mainly LDV growing wine grapes. The third circle completes the full circle of farming by turning the grapes into wine. I kind of love this tribute. knowing the connection LDV feels with the land, let’s take a look at the five key factors that they stake their wine reputation on.

1. Mountain environment: a high enough altitude to create about a 30-degree difference in temperature from daytime highs to nighttime lows. 2. A pristine and plentiful water supply: sitting atop the Wilcox Playa aquifer, they have a reliable, pure supply for their vines. 3. Superior air movement and water drainage: a place that moves the cooler air through the vineyard in springtime, and drains the summer rain. 4. The Volcanic Soil: the vineyard is positioned smack dab in the middle of a blast zone of the Turkey Creek Caldera. 5. No previous commercial agriculture within the last 100 years, making it free of any agricultural pesticide run off.

"Grape to glass" is LDV's motto and their wines are gluten free, and vegan. I always thought that since grapes fell into these categories, wine must also fall into these categories... WRONG!!! While it is true that wine is made from grapes and that most wines are gluten free, some wineries use a wheat paste when sealing their oak barrels. There are also many wineries that use animal products during the fining [a winemaking process used to clarify and stabilize wine by adding substances that bind to suspended solids] process often making the wine unsuitable for vegans.

Many wines are not specifically labeled as gluten free or vegan, but there is a vegan wine database that can be used to confirm. I am personally not vegan, so I have never actually looked on the labels for this information, but who knew!? Next week Wine with Wixy will be exploring more of a wine bar establishment. It is so good that I thought it deserved a place in my wine blog!!  

Cheers to you my wine loving friends, and TTFN!!