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Desert DigestCheers to No Hangovers: Pick up a Bottle of Proxies Non-Alcoholic Wine at Select Sprouts in Phoenix

Pavle MilicSeptember 12, 2023

I’ve often wondered about the utility of having decaffeinated coffee. Like, what is the point? Obviously, the category is a money-maker, and the demand is there. Which brings me to the non-alcoholic beverage category. You could almost pose the same question: What is the point? A lot of folks are choosing to drink less. Pregnant women like to have NA options; designated drivers also do not want to just have a cranberry and soda; and...

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Desert DigestFood & DrinkPav on Juice: Interview with a Wine Advisor

Pavle MilicMarch 21, 2023

“Tell me who you walk with and I will tell you who you are.” Loosely translated from an old Colombian saying, this is a favorite heuristic that I continue to apply in life. And it became even more significant when our winery, Los Milics, acquired its first vineyard in Elfrida. Although Juan Flores, our vineyard foreman, is good at his job, we wanted another perspective to fine-tune the way we approach viticulture. Enter Fritz Westover...

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Desert DigestFood & DrinkPav on Juice: V-Day Bubbly

Pavle MilicFebruary 6, 2023

Valentine’s Day is like Campari and soda: Either you love it, or you hate it. The holiday has the usual built-in tropes associated with Hallmark cards, flowers, romantic dinners and popping Champagne corks. Of those, the bubbly remains my favorite Valentine’s Day stereotype – irrespective of relationship status. So instead of name-dropping and urging you to go get some Cristal or Dom, which will put a big hole on your wallet, let’s instead go the...

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Desert DigestFood & DrinkPav on Juice: Making of a Winery, Vol. VII

Pavle MilicDecember 5, 2022

This time of year – harvest season – is imbued with reflection for the team at Los Milics Vineyards. Each vintage brings a new story and perspective. Precipitation coupled with harvest is not something desirable, but for better or for worse, part of the winemaking milieu here in Arizona. (Thanks for nothing, monsoons!) We had a very wet August both in Sonoita and at Jenny’s Vineyard located in Elfrida, and were forced to make picking...

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Desert DigestFood & DrinkPav on Juice: The Marvelous Teroldego

Pavle MilicSeptember 9, 2022

As a wine buyer, one is exposed to a lot of wine. Over the last 13 years at my Valley restaurant, FnB, I’ve tasted thousands of new, strange wines. Two years ago, a distributor brought me a wine from Trentino-Alto-Adige, a wine region to the northeast of Italy. The grape was Teroldego from Azienda Agricola Foradori, and the wine was inky and deeply hued. It had the weight and gravitas of a burly Cabernet Sauvignon....

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Desert DigestFood & DrinkPav on Juice: Arizona Analogs

Pavle MilicJuly 20, 2022

Which world wine region does Arizona compare to? It’s a question I’ve been answering for years. My answer? No other region. There are similarities in grape varietals to other regions. I have had Grenache from the south of France that mirrors our expressions of Grenache. A grape like Vermentino, through the lens of Sand-Reckoner, comes close to benchmarks from Corsica and Sardinia. Some qualities of our wine remind me of the Old World, like earth,...

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Desert DigestPav on Juice: Cove Mesa Vineyard

Pavle MilicMay 17, 2022

I first tasted the wines from Cove Mesa Vineyard at the Oro Festival in Tucson in late winter and was instantly enamored of their Malvasia Bianca, replete with aromas of passion fruit and lychee and delivering puckering acidity. Additionally, I had their Picpoul Blanc, which was light and refreshing and brilliantly balanced. Meanwhile, their reds were imposing and robust. My personal enthusiasm for the Cornville-based winery got a big vote of confidence this past March,...

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Desert DigestFood & DrinkPav on Juice: The Glory of Graciano

Pavle MilicMarch 28, 2022

Planting a vineyard involves a great deal of work, from establishing the water source to developing the irrigation and trellis infrastructure. There’s also the small matter of deciding what to plant. When my team at Los Milics Vineyards was making these important decisions three years ago, we reached out to local winemakers to find out what would do well in our part of the world. Graciano made the cut. Native to the Rioja and Navarre...

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Desert DigestFood & DrinkPav on Juice: Making of a Winery Vol. XIII

Pavle MilicJanuary 27, 2022

2022 is here, and it’s fitting to reflect as we commence another year. Back in 2004, while driving south on Napa Valley’s Silverado Trail after helping at Neyers Vineyards with my friend Tadeo Borchardt, I whispered to myself that one day I would be involved in the world of making wine. Was I mollifying my own existential anxiety over the future by dreaming the impossible? Perhaps. “Be careful what you wish for,” the saying goes....

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Desert DigestFood & DrinkPav on Juice: Hilltop Fun in Cottonwood

Pavle MilicNovember 15, 2021

My co-owner at FnB, Charleen Badman, and I started showcasing the bounty of the local terroir almost 12 years ago. We decided early on to reach out to our community to represent our state through the lens of food and wine. None of that has changed, and we continue to inculcate and foment our focus on provenance. Every time we discover a new artisan, farmer or winemaker, we are not only giddy, but also amazed...

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Desert DigestFood & DrinkPav on Juice: My Fave New Bottle Shop

Pavle MilicSeptember 17, 2021

It’s always momentous, at least for an oenophile like me, when a new wine shop or bar opens. Far Away Wine and Provisions in East Phoenix is the brainchild of Pat Jasmin and Chris French, part of the food-and-bev fabric of Arizona for years. Jasmin has done a little of everything, from writing wine lists to owning a restaurant to wine distribution, which is how she met French, a history and music buff who sold...

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Desert DigestFood & DrinkPav on Juice: Making of a Winery, Vol. VII

Pavle MilicAugust 9, 2021

At Los Milics Vineyards in Sonoita, we’re hosting tastings on our crush pad while the tasting room is built. If I am not in the weeds, I give tours of the production facility. Invariably, someone asks about barrels. Questions like “Where do you get your barrels?” or “Are they all new?” are common. There are three major reasons to use oak barrels: to add aromatic and flavor compounds; allow for slow oxygen exchange through porous...

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Desert DigestFood & DrinkPav on Juice: The Vranac Varietal

Pavle MilicMay 21, 2021

The delicate art of selecting the right grape varietal to plant on any given plot of land led me to create an informal amicus brief with neighboring winemakers in Sonoita. With my coterie, I parse through all the choices to make prudent decisions based on history and performance of established vineyards. Currently at our Los Milics estate vineyard, we have Petit Verdot, Marsanne and Montepulciano in the ground; and this spring, we’re grafting Malvasia Bianca,...

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