
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/8886059/sb2013finalfront.0.jpg)

The Gun Fighter is Ide’s late father-in-law and The Big Iron is David. The Prairie Lass is their other daughter Harlow. The Red Bird is their daughter Scarlet Wren. The characters represent Ide’s family members, with her husband and winery co-owner David Ide choosing the names and matching them with a person. The names of each wine reflect artist-drawn custom sketches that exude Western verve. Ide is preparing to launch a wine club which will grant members perks like exclusive releases and discounts. Her current lineup of nine wines includes single variety reds, red blends, a rose, and an orange wine which is made from white Malvasia Bianca grapes that are destemmed and fermented like red wine, producing a very pale peachy hue. I’m driving a forklift and a tractor but the product is very white-collar. She describes it as a winemaker’s version of triage, pivoting around the whims of nature to ensure the fruit completes its journey to the bottle.Īnd despite wine’s highfalutin reputation, the behind-the-scenes isn’t glamorous. A key part of her job is procuring the fruit before inclement weather hits, and navigating when it does. She talks about the monsoons and dealing with unpredictable weather. It’s why Ide is speaking from Elgin, about three hours south of her north Scottsdale home. It’s when the picking, processing, bottling, and shipping for the latest vintages happens. Late summer to early fall is the peak season for winemakers. I just do my best to usher it through,” she says.
#Pocket stache manual
For two or three months of the year, she is mostly a one-woman-show handling duties ranging from punch downs and monitoring fermentation to hauling two tons of grapes and pressing them in her 1970s-era manual presser. Ide purchases fruit from vineyards in the Sonoita-Elgin and Willcox areas, where the vast majority of Arizona grape varieties are grown. “I like going to everyone, asking how their family is, what’s going on with them," she says. There are three distributors vying for her business, but she’s not sure. Ide delivers cases to establishments herself, skipping the middleman. “These little shops and small businesses are my bread and butter,” she says. Vino Stache has made its way from wine festivals into wine stores including ODV Wines, Arcadia Premium, Genuwine, and Far Away Wine & Provisions, along with independent restaurants such as Southern Rail, Beckett’s Table, and FnB. Over the last three years, the Phoenician-turned-Southern Arizona winemaker has quietly grown her small business.

#Pocket stache professional
She started her career as a professional volleyball player, before turning to the corporate world. But for my micro-boutique winery, my feet are all I need,” Ide says.īut Ide hasn't always been stomping grapes. “I am sure there are machines for large commercial wineries. This is a serious part of how the winemaker and winery owner has done business since opening her Elgin-based operation in 2019.įoot stomping, Ide explains, is an easy way to extract enough juice to start fermentation for a whole cluster-style wine, which her bottled Graciano will be. While comical, it's not merely for laughs. “You sanitize your feet and get right in there,” Ide says enthusiastically from Vino Stache Winery in southern Arizona. Thirty seconds before answering the phone, Brooke Lowry Ide was standing in a huge fermenting bin foot stomping grapes.
