Laying Waste to Phoenix: The WM Phoenix Open, TPC Scottsdale, February 8-11, 2024
It feels somewhat sacrilegious to be writing about wine at the WM Phoenix Open, the PGA Tour’s homage to Oktoberfest. After all, I never see anyone showering the pros on 16 with pinot grigio. But we have our marching orders, so here’s where to go if you need a bottle of wine for a change of pace.
Restaurants
I was disappointed that only a few places in Phoenix/Scottsdale have the cajones to put their lists online. After all, it’s a tourist/snowbird destination and wine-seeking visitors could use some help. But just be warned-the big gun wine programs tend to come with equally hefty tariffs.
Three restaurants at the Wrigley Mansion (Jamie’s, Giordie’s, Christopher’s) share a prodigious list purported to include 1600 different wines but I quickly lost count while daydreaming among the 100 plus pages. It is one of the finest lists we’ve encountered in our virtual travels. It has everything under the sun and even a sense of humor. Enormous selection of high-end wines from all over, with an astonishing number of verticals in every classic region. You can certainly max out your credit card here but there are hundreds of well-curated selections under $100. Bravo! Presided over by a team of credentialed experts with a Master Sommelier in charge. This list deserves a direct link all its own: Wrigley Mansion Wine List
.Anhelo features maybe the 2nd best list I could find. It’s comprehensive and studded with high end offerings, with strength in Bordeaux, Burgundy, California, and Italy. Some of the wine list layout seems a tad artificial because they make a big show of breaking out specific appellations only to feature a single available wine. Other than this minor affectation, it’s a winner if you’re on a big budget.
Vincent on Camelback has one of the most unusual lists I’ve encountered. The coverage is good, but It’s pretty much perfunctory everywhere in the world until you get to Burgundy and Bordeaux. Then the gloves come off and we get to see where the owner’s and sommelier’s passions lie. Highlights are verticals of Rousseau and an astonishing 11 bottle vertical of DRC Romanee-St. Vivant. The Bordeaux collection is terrific as well. Come here by all means if you’re a hardcore Francophile who flew into Scottsdale for golf on a private jet.
FnB Restaurant and Wine Bar has a delightful list. It’s relatively small but quirky as heck and full of helpful and interesting annotations. .Offbeat grape varieties and appellations abound, including a Beaujolais section with accompanying rationale (“the wines make me happy to be alive.”) A treatise on Arizona’s wine growing regions? Check. These are people who clearly love wine and it’s where I’d go if I couldn’t afford DRC Romanee St. Vivant, which would be a good assumption.
No-see-ums. Lon’s Restaurant at the Hermosa Inn allegedly has 700 wines to choose from but we have no idea what they are.
Retail
Atlas Wine is a welcome outpost in a sea of big chains and smaller stores with no online inventory or nothing to show but Facebook homepages or Instagram shots. While the options presented on the web are not what I’d call extensive, they are very well curated and offer appealing choices in all price ranges. They call themselves “Arizona’s Premier Bottle Shop” and based on my survey they get my vote.
Tarbell’s is a strange concept where it appears the focus is to upsell one of several club memberships that range as high as $6000 a year! It’s not even clear what that buys you. The online store is decent, but you have to poke around. Four white Burgundies is all she wrote.
