Desert DigestPav on Juice: Making of a Winery, Vol. VIII
Pavle MilicFebruary 13, 2024
A monthly look at Arizona wine with Valley dining impresario Pavle Milic.
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....
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...