020: Corey Turnbull of Rubrix

Award-winning winemaker Corey Turnbull shares his remarkable journey from humble beginnings in Sedona to becoming a celebrated figure in the Arizona wine landscape. With his first taste of Cristal in a Styrofoam cup as a young man, Corey's path was set toward crafting exceptional wines like the renowned Grenache Noir at Rubrix and Page Springs Cellars. His story is as colorful as the labels on his bottles, featuring unique artwork by his daughter, and reflects a dedication to quality and creativity that shines through every vintage.

Join us as Corey brings to life the challenges and triumphs of winemaking, from early mornings in the vineyards to the creation of innovative blends like the humorously named "PMS." Discover the transformative moments that led to the establishment of the Burning Tree brand, and the collaborative spirit that drives his work with mentors and partners. Corey's dual role at Page Springs and Rubrix highlights his strategic approach to vineyard selection and the art of creating wines with personality and depth.

In this episode, you will hear:

• Corey's journey from Sedona beginnings to an award-winning Arizona winemaker.
• Early influence of Cristal champagne in a Styrofoam cup on Corey's wine passion.
• Creative wine blends and brand development, including the Burning Tree brand and "PMS" blend.
• Strategic vineyard selection, focusing on Rhône varietals at Colibri Vineyard.
• Establishment and growth of Rubrix Wines, with unique topographical labels and innovative blends.

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Episode Credits

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:00

And I remember what the first trip I went on. Uh, we had to wake up, I think we stayed in just north of Paso, and there was a little vineyard called Lakewood or Lockwood Oaks, I want to say. And uh, I remember driving up there and you know it was still dark out. We woke up about 4 a.m. to go to the pick. And I remember this beautiful shooting star. I remember sitting on the back of this truck waiting for the uh crew to show up, and there was a deer just walking through the vineyard and the sun rose, and I'm sitting there drinking a Red Bull, and it was just like I I just really re-evaluated my whole life. I'm just like, what am I doing? Waiting tables, and the money wasn't much better. But uh, so I just said I I want to do this instead. And that was that was a pretty seminal moment for change for me.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Welcome to Wine World, the podcast that takes you from vineyard to glass. Each episode, your host Pavle Milich, winemaker, restaurateur, and columnist explores wine grape growing, wine making, and wine and food pairings, focusing on Arizona and beyond. Join us as we visit vineyards, chat with restaurateurs, and meet the pioneers behind top wineries. Whether you're a wine enthusiast or curious about starting your own winery, Wineworld offers the perfect blend of education and entertainment. Pour yourself a glass and tune in to discover the stories behind the bottle.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

I've crossed paths with Corey Turnbull two years in a row while pouring at the annual Governor's Cup, Arizona's premier wine competition where industry experts evaluate submissions in a double-blind tasting format and award medals in categories ranging from best white wine to best in show. For the past two years, Los Milix Vineyards has been invited to participate. In 2024, we proudly took home Best White, Best Rosé, and Best in Show. Let's just say I became very popular in my mother's apartment building. That same year, Corey Turnbull, the creative force behind Rubrics, was awarded Best Malvasilla. In 2025, Los Milix returned to collect another Best Rosé Award, and Corey was there once again, this time accepting the best white wine category for a striking white wine made with Grenache grapes. He calls it Grenache Noir. Many will also recognize Corey from his earlier work at Arizona Stronghold and later through his previous label, Burning Tree Cellars. So today, in addition to crafting his own rubrics wines, Corey also makes wine at Page Brink Cellars under the direction of Eric Lumsky. I've had my fair share of Corey's wines and they're well worth taking out. They're balanced, expressive, and deeply rooted in a sense of place. I've long called Malvasia Bianca Arizona's aromatic empress. And Corey's rendition lives up to that title. It says lemony, floral, citrus laced, and packed with laser focused thirst-quenching acidity. His wines are visually striking as they are drinkable. Each label features watercolor artwork painted by his daughter, and I assure you it will be amazing eye candy for any seller shelf. You can visit Corey up in uh Old Town Cottonwood, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. So just go ahead and sit down and enjoy Corey's Genesis story and pop a bottle of wine and sit back and relax and enjoy. Thank you. Corey, I think a good place to start is by rewinding to maybe 31 years ago in 1994, a certain story about Kristal and the styrofoam cup.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Well, that was my first kind of love affair with wine in a glass, and it wasn't a glass. I was 16 years old at the time. And you know, I moved to Sedona with my parents at a very young age. And you had two options. You know, I'm from a blue-collar family, so I had to get to work very young. I started working in restaurants around 12, and I was a host, and then I became a busser, and then I went to a restaurant where I can make more money, and there was a place called Stake and Six in Los Bergados. And back then it used to be a pretty premier property. And you know, I met Axl Rose and I talked to Coolio about pool sticks, and it was a really cool place to work. And they had a pretty interesting wine selection. And uh anyway, one of my mentors at the time, his name was Joe Mooney. And I always looked up to him and I learned a lot of my waiting skills, which I eventually used to me when I became a waiter. But there was one night a couple came in, and it was an older gentleman and a younger girl, and they obviously weren't a stable couple. I want to say she was a pro. And uh, the first thing she asked me, you know, I'm giving them, I'm asking them whether they want sparkling or still. I'm just the busser, you know. And she asked me, says, Do you have any champagne? You know, I studied the list a little bit, and I just said the most expensive wine on the list, which was crystal. At the time it was like $400 a bottle, which is probably a steal today, but I can't remember the vintage. I want to say it was like 88 or 89. Anyway, she said, I want a crystal and I want you to bring two glasses with a marciano cherry in each glass. And I was, I didn't, I didn't know then, and now it's kind of sacrilege. But I went to Joe in the back, and this is like the last table of the night. They came in at like 15 minutes before we closed. So we were kind of bumming. We had the restaurant to ourselves, and you know, we were running the whole room. And he thought I was lying to him. And I'm like, Joe, just go order the wine. That's what they told me. You know, we were kind of bickering at each other. And then he went, anyway, he ordered the wine and they ended up just getting an appetizer and they sat there for like maybe 20 minutes and then they left. And Joe came in, he's like, hey, I got to get out of here. I'll give you an extra 50 bucks to reset the room, which we had to reset the room from dinner to breakfast, take all the tablecloths off, and put up the napkins and the coffee cups. And I went over and I'm by myself in the restaurant cleaning the room and resetting it. And I pick up the champagne bucket. It was really heavy. So I took it to the back and I set it down. I finished doing most of my side work, you know, outside of mopping the floors and and I uh pulled out that bottle and was full up, like it was only like a glass was out of it. So I just poured the rest of it at a big 44-ounce styrofoam cup, you know, threw it away. And I just remember whistling and drinking this crystal through a straw while I was mopping. And the GM of the whole property, his name was Ed Zelinski. Uh, pretty sure that was his name, Ed. Anyway, he came by. He's all hey Corey, good to see you're working hard and late. I was like, right on Ed. And I'm just, you know, toasting him with his crystal. And then ever since then, I just fell in love with wine. Uh, I started uh, you know, in high school, even my freshman sophomore year, I used to tap shoulders, you know, at the grocery market. I used to sit outside of bash's and I'd ask people if they'd buy me booze. And you know, I'm sure these people thought that I'd be asking for like a 12-pack of natural ice or something, you know, that everyone else was drinking. And they would say yes, and I'd give them like $500 with a list of different Chiantes and and champagnes and all that stuff. And I would go to parties with bottles of wine when I was in high school. So I always been into wine and that kind of, and there's always been a uh uh passion about it. And then I, you know, I studied and started waiting tables. I got my introductory psawn pen when I was 23, and just you know, this has always been a part of my life. So that was that's where it kind of started.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

So when did you jump ship from you know, quote unquote the restaurant business into production?

SPEAKER_02 7:04

Well, it was a it was a gradual transition at first. I used to so I met Eric Lomsky, owner of Page Springs. I met him in oh 2005. Okay. And uh I went out to the winery, and you know, Joe Bouchard was the winemaker at the time, and uh Bill Fanning and uh Maynard was still out, you know, hanging out around there and and they were doing stuff together back then. And it was funny, the first night I the first day I went out and met Eric before I started working at the winery, he's all hey, you want to go to Maynard's house tomorrow? They're doing some kind of thing for Ed Asner because there's a there was a movie that Maynard and Ed Asner was was in. And I got to go pour some wines up at Maynard's house. That's the first time I met him, and that was a great time. Anyway, a lot of doors were open just meeting Eric and knowing those guys. But I want to say it started in the harvest of 05. I started working at the winery. I would go out and just help out during the day for free. And my only pavement was I got to thief a barrel. I always gravitated towards this uh a Syrah barrel uh carriage vineyard. We used to get a lot of fruit from Paso at the time. And I just jump up there, I used to climb up, get a thief, taste some wine, and then I'd go home, take a shower, and go to work at the restaurant at night. And I did that for like two vintages.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

So, what did a day look like when you were sort of doing this pro bono work at the end of the day?

SPEAKER_02 8:17

Well, I'd go in, you know. I mean, I wouldn't do it five days a week. That would just kill me, but I'd do it like three days a week just early on, and I'd go in just helping them, you know, mostly just cleaning drains. I remember creating drain traps at my house. I was just, you know, just kind of be as helpful as possible with those guys and try to get my foot in the door. And then, but I actually started, Eric talked me, so I was a manager at the Barking Frog in Sedona, used to be part of the uh polar bear group, the cowboy club, Tom Gilliman, and all those guys. And he actually hired me to be the taste room manager in 2008. But before that, 2006, I remember going, so in addition to working in the winery during the day and you know the restaurant at night, I went with Eric to California on fruit trips. So I'd hop in a reefer with him. We'd drive out there and I'd I'd get to see all the vineyards and stuff. And I remember what the first trip I went on. Uh, we had to wake up, I think we stayed in just north of Paso, and there was a little vineyard called Lakewood or Lockwood Oaks, I want to say. And uh I remember driving up there and you know it was still dark out. We woke up about 4 a.m. to go to the pick. And I remember this beautiful shooting star. I remember sitting on the back of this truck waiting for the uh crew to show up, and there was a deer just walking through the vineyard and the sun rose, and I'm sitting there drinking a Red Bull, and I was just like, I I just really re-evaluated my whole life. I'm just like, what am I doing? Waiting tables, and the money was much better. But uh, so I just said I I want to do this instead. And that was that was a pretty seminal moment for change for me. And then uh that same trip or the trip right after that to we were getting petits or off from Ranchita Canyon. Me, I talked to Eric about doing my uh wine myself, and we talked, you know, it's a 13-hour drive out there, and my first plan was to do this. So I really love Chateau Neuf de Pops, and I love uh there's a particular producer, Bo Castell, and I know you're familiar with them, and they make a wine called Hommage du Jacques Perrin. Anyway, early on, I always loved kind of that wine and doing uh a GSM, but with Mavedra being the you know the star role. So what I wanted to do was I wanted to do uh MSG, and I was gonna put a Chinese to-go box on it, you know, and and on the bottle. I mean, knowing what I know now, that's fucking really illegal, but you know, whatever. That was the plan and talking with Eric the whole trip. And we even Eric was getting this old vine Medra from just south of San Jose, sort of the old Lime kiln valley, uh, Enns Vineyard. Old, old vine, like hundred-year-old vines. Beautiful, beautiful fruit. And I was gonna base it off that particular grape.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

Ian Brand makes an outstanding Morvedra from the Enns Vineyard. Yeah, it's such good.

SPEAKER_02 10:54

And there's another vineyard near there called Wurz that we used to get cab feffer from. That was always awesome, like blueberries and spice. Anyway, so when we came back that same trip, you know, we pull in the driveway with a petite Syrah, and it's about three in the morning. We're high on Red Bull and Taco Bell and road food, food, you know. So the first thing we do is it's good drink, you know, we beeline it to the cellar. We're in the cellar climbing on barrels and tasting different things from the vintage before. And I remember standing on a three-stack, looking at a four-stack, you know, so I'm about 12 feet off the ground. And there was a barrel of petite Syrah that we just picked from the vintage before. And then there was this uh barrel of Merlot from Miller Vineyard, this little old lady's like acre vineyard that we used to buy fruit from. And I remember looking down at Eric and I was like, hey, I'm gonna blend a PMS. Ha ha ha ha. Just joking, you know, petite Syrah, Merlot, and Syrah, equal parts. And I'm not really a big petite Syrah guy. I find it kind of monolithic and kind of too much base, you know, by itself. But the blend was really nice. Anyway, chalked it up as a kind of a drinking after the trip. Then the following year comes, you know, harvest time, and you know, I signed my contract, I save pennies, I borrow some money from my dad to make my first wine. And in the 11th hour, uh the owner of Ends kind of transferred everything over to his son, and he kind of pulled the plug on the fruit that we were supposed to get. So the 11th hour I lost my my first wine that I was supposed to make. So Eric brought me, I remember him bringing me to the office. This is before I worked there. This was like 07. He's like, Do you wanna do you want your money back? Or you know, what do you want to do here? And I was like, Remember that PMS we made that night that we came back? He's all yeah. I'm like, Can we do that? He's like, Yeah. So the original plan was to make the first wine and call it PMS. Maynard even suggested that I that I dip it in red wax and put a string out the top of it. You know, the classic Maynard, but obviously I can't go to my mom and be like, Look, mom, I'm changing my whole direction of life. This is my first product. So we ended up calling that wine. We made it, and the first year we called the wine the Lotus. Two years later, uh Mitch Levy, who was my business partner with Burning Tree, and we started the brand and launched it. Uh, we were able to make that MSG finally, and uh, we called it the dragon. And that's how the names kind of started with the Burning Tree wines. And then, you know, we did Burning Tree for many years. Let me just back up a little bit. When you made Lotus, was Eric still making the wine? I was in there, but and I was making decisions. I wasn't primary science, you know, fermentation, any of that stuff. I was making blending decisions, oaks decisions, things like that. So I'm very minimalistic then. This was and Joe Bichard was here too, around 07. And then Joe was probably the primary in the first two years, and then John Scarborough and Chris Babin came in. And still Eric was in the cellar a lot more than he is these days. Yeah, it was like a team of guys. I want to say the first year though, Joe Bouchard was the head winemaker. And then, you know, then I went to work for Eric in the winery in May of 2008 as taste room manager, which you know put me closer to the wine. Grew the brand 09, 10. So some of my wine actually made at Arizona Stronghold. And the first years, I want to say 2011 and 12, I made some wine at Stronghold because I grew the production to like 1200 cases. And Tim White, yeah, Tim was there. Tim and Tim and Mike were there. So 2011 and 12, I want to say that those were those guys were kind of leading the charge when it came to you know fermentation, all that stuff. You know, I would go out and I would help, you know, I would learn things, inoculate, but I never went 100%. And then 2013, I decided that I didn't want to be mostly it was just I didn't want to be around people anymore. I remember being at the tasting room, and you know, Page Springs is a very busy place. It's kind of like Disneyland on the weekends. You got fucking bachelorette parties and just crazy shit, you know. So, you know, I had fun doing that, but I and mostly it was not just about people, it was also managing people. As you know, managing employees just kind of sucks. It's just everyone needs a day off, or you know, there's a million problems, and I'm not gonna talk shit about waiters because I was one, but I remember yeah, I still am one. Actually, I love serving it. It's kind of a fun time to present and to like when I do wine dinners and stuff. I love pouring and moving, you know, with I'll help bus, you know, I'm sitting there bussing. You know, I love doing that stuff. But anyway, back to where I was. So at 13, there's this group of I don't know, 40-something-year-old people that came in. And this lady, she found out her friend next door was pregnant. So she decided to stand up on the couch and jump up and down and scream on the top of her lung because she was so excited that her friend was pregnant. And I was standing in the room and I just remember yelling across the room, get the fuck down. And uh it didn't make her husband happy, but you know, we had words, and eventually I got to the point I'm like, okay, I don't want to do this babysitting anymore. So I went to Eric and I said, you know, I just want to be in the cellar full time, you know. So there was an opening. This is when Tim, Tim and Mike left Stronghold. So there was an opening to go over there, and you know, there's a lot of things that needed attention over there. And I'm not saying it was on Tim and Mike or anything, it's just there was a lot of, you know, the chiller was messed up. There was a mold outbreak in a cellar. Joey, the guy that was kind of leading the charge over there, I didn't didn't really know. And anyways, it for me it was a great opportunity to learn quickly. And it was like a fucking 70% pay cut to start at the bottom, you know, of that totem pole, which my wife, God bless her, she she didn't uh leave me. Still bitterness. So then uh, you know, I worked my way up. And then within a year, just because of the need, I was production manager. Within 18 months, I was basically co-winemaking, and I was basically running the team. I brought in some good friends. We turned a lot of things around. I want to say I had my first year that was 14, and then my second year running the whole thing was 15. Me and John Scarborough did most of the heavy lifting, and and we had my good friend Ian Coons. We made some great wines. We ended up making the best wine of the state with a Gewürztrometer from Benita that year, which which I, you know, I was have a lot of pride about because we had a lot of fun and we did like over 300 tons, and and a lot of people kind of counted us out because we were the rag tag, those guys aren't gonna do shit kind of team, you know. And then, you know, it just just hard work, I think, and and just learning and paying off. Uh anyway, Eric brought me back to Page Springs to be co-winemaker with Marissa Gagliardi in 2017. I kind of ran some laps around that situation and I became head winemaker in 2018. I've kind of been there ever since as head winemaker. Uh, the whole time, you know, you know, we were making uh Burning Tree and uh and then that transitioned in 2021 uh to rubrics. My my business partner, Mitch Levy, unfortunately, before he he got sick and fortunately passed away from COVID in August of 21. Ugly death. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But before he even got sick, uh, you know, I went up to him in that spring and I was just like, you know, I I kind of just want to do this on my own. And the original plan was just to just to do like a mailing list kind of format and and try to simplify things a little bit and and and do like 500 cases a year, if that, you know, and try to get a wine club going. And I signed contracts, you know, just save my money again, you know, kind of start over. But then he got sick and that kind of changed everything. You know, I had to kind of change course. Uh when we made some commemorative wines under the Burning Tree label, you know, you know, celebrating him and his life. And we even went back to California and bought some of the vineyards we used to work with back in the day, like Santa Margarita and those kind of things, to do some really good Bordeaux style wines. Because we haven't, you know, we stopped buying California fruit in 2015, I want to say. But anyway, um, we made some commemorative wines for him, which kind of left the door open on Burning Tree a little bit longer. You know, Burning Tree stayed open just because we had more inventory and we stayed open. But at the same vintage 21, we we made our first uh rubrix wines, and you know, was the plan all along rubrics? Is I'm trying to age the wines better for rubrics and have them released when they're ready.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

How does the conversation work when you're making wine and you want to do your own label? Was that something that you were able to arrange with Eric?

SPEAKER_02 18:48

Yes. Yeah. So I mean, basically, I wanted to do both, you know. I mean, I so work basically I wear two hats when I'm at uh when I'm at Page Springs, I wear, you know, rubrics hat, a page springs hat, Page Springs. I'm the winemaker. I make all the decisions for, you know, mostly production. Eric, Eric brings me the fruit. We co you know, co-create. When it comes to rubrics, though, I basically just buy the fruit and I'm a custom crush contract. So I pay Page Springs, you know, cost per case for production. Our volume of production is not big enough to really support a production facility or buying all of it, plus the capital is just not there. So it's kind of the only option I have. But yeah, that's basically how it works. I just basically say, okay, I'm planning on doing, you know, 1200 cases this year. I'll contract through him. We bring in a lot of fruit from Calibri. We love that vineyard. You know, stylistically, we focus on Rhone varietals here, and that's kind of where my passion is and where my inspiration is. And Calibri is just a perfect place for that. It's rhyolytic granite, it's high elevation, huge diurnal shifts, very windy. Uh anyway, beautiful Syrah, Garnache, Mevet, Roussan. Uh, we just planted pickpool there. There's some cool stuff coming online. But most of our fruit's coming from there, but I also buy off the bench. Sam Pillsbury sold me. I've done stuff with Sam. I've bought fruit from Deep Sky over the years, uh, a little bit from Carlson, just a couple wines here and there, although I haven't bought from him in since the first vintage or 22. But yeah, just you know, whatever, whatever I want to make or I to get my hands on, I do.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

I was talking to James Callahan from Rune, and I know he's purchased a little bit of fruit from Colibri. Can you tell me more about that vineyard? Because it's not in the conventional sort of wine-growing regions per se, it's in the Chiracawas, or where is it specifically?

SPEAKER_02 20:28

Yeah, so it's on the so a good place to start. I mean, you know where Keelan Schaefer is on Turkey Creek. If you go right east over the mountains there, you're gonna hit Calibri.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

So we're talking about an hour, 40 minutes.

SPEAKER_02 20:40

Well, if you go over the mountain pass, but generally it's about an hour and 10 minutes past from Wilcox proper because you have to go through I-10 all the way down to uh Portal. So you gotta go all the way to the border, and then you go south on a dirt road for like 25 miles, and then that's and then it forks off into a the road's called Whitetail Canyon, and that's the canyon that Calibri sits in. Have you ever been to the top of Chirikawa National Monument? I have not. But if you go up there, it's beautiful, it's a beautiful place to go. But if you go up to the top and you look east, that's the canyon. And there's an arch that you can see from Calibri, a rock arch. And you could see that from the Chiricawa, the National Monument, but you can't see Calibri because it's behind that hill. It's 5300, 5300 feet in elevation, well, 52 to 53. It's on a north northern slope, mostly rhyolite, which is granitic. It's uh we, you know, we farm, I want to say it's about seven and a half acres. We're we're looking to expand some of it. I know that Eric's really into agave, so he's planted a big field to agave, and he's looking to actually try to do a you know, set up a palinque out there and do the whole the whole mescal thing. Although I don't think you can call it mescal, because this is definitely not Waxaka. And it's not the normal you know, species that will grow up here. But how did he find that spot? Because well, Bob Johnson planted it in 2000, I want to say. So Bob Johnson, the original owner of Calibra. Vineyard. He had a little brand, a little winemaking. I don't I wouldn't even call it facility. It was pretty nuts out there. But he planted it on an old apple orchard. So it's located in the old, the town doesn't exist anymore, but it was called Hilltop. And it used to be a mining town. And there's a mine out there right above the vineyard in the mountain. And there's a stream that comes out of a mine. It fills up a huge reclamation pond right above the vineyard, like right above it. And it used to be an apple orchard, I want to say, at the turn of the 20th century. And I want to say the town was abandoned. And the old house that's there actually used to be the mayor's house. Don't quote me on that. And they moved it down the hill. It used to be higher on the hill, and they moved it down the hill to this the current location. Anyway, there's I guess there's a couple old apple trees still there. But Bob planted the vineyard, and Bob was a big, from my understanding, Bob was a big Alban uh vineyards guy. So I think he got a lot of inspiration on John Albin and what he was growing. And which makes sense. You know, there's oddly there's a little bit of petite verdeaux that does very well. There's three different clones of Syrah. They're all ermitage clones. So 474, 99, and 174. I always get the 99, which seems to be the blackest, kind of richest, more pyrazenic, herbaceous, you know. Eric keeps all the 174, which I think is most Rhone, Cornos, you know, black olive, earthy stuff. The 474 is a little more red-fruited, all beautiful Syrah. There's a huge block of Mavedra. The Mavedra there is awesome. It just grows all the shoots goes grow straight up. It produces such beautiful fruit. And then there's a little bit, I'm trying to think, used to be beunier. We grafted over some marson. It's still young. We're waiting to see what how the Grenache is probably my favorite wine grapes in the state. Calibri Grenache is so spicy and lithe. And you know, like most of the state's grenache, it has a tendency to be a little lighter, a little more feminine. But calibri just has a beautiful spice. And when you age it, it it picks up a marrow and dried orange peel and tea leaf. It kind of reminds me of like it's if Arizona had a Pinot, I think Calibri Grenache would be it. Also beautiful rose from that. Then the Roussans, awesome. I mean, classic Roussan. And then we planted a little gamay, which Ian, it's uh third leaf, but we're third or fourth leaf, but we're looking forward to that. And then there's a little block down by the house that it's the third time we've replanted it just because it it always doesn't seem to do well. Uh, we planted pickpool. So we're pretty excited about the pickpool coming online. And then there's a little block of mission too, which is hyper vigorous. And uh we'll probably whenever we make that, it's either going to go into big blends until it's unique enough, or we probably will, you know, utilize it for its traditional purpose and make brandy with it.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

What's the temperature like over there, Florida?

SPEAKER_02 24:38

Well, it's it's uh you know, hot during the day, cool during the night. And because it's in a canyon, it's pretty windy. So it got hit with a little bit of frost this year, but usually we don't see much frost there at all. I mean, we were really lucky to get the vineyard at all. I mean, the vineyard, so there was a pretty bad fire on that side of the mountain in 2011. It surrounded the whole vineyard. The only reason the vineyard was spared was the uh hotshot crew was utilizing the house as kind of a uh you know command center to fight the fire. And they were bringing helicopters in and using the pond to dump water and all the fires. But that year all the fruit was just cooked. I mean, I want to say we usually get about 30 tons off that site. And in 2011, we brought in four and four to six, and it was all we actually a lot of most of it we made and then turned into we distilled it into brandy. And then we have a pretty neat calibri brandy that we're selling at Page Springs that's really smoky, almost like a scotch. And then Eric made a little bit of it into wine, but it I'm very sensitive to smoke taint. I fucking can't stand smoke taint. It's just gross to me. That was the worst wine in my opinion. It smelled like kind of like an ashtray, but you know, teacher owned some people actually liked it. But so what happened was the next year, the following year, 2012, we got hit with our normal monsoons and all this ash and you know, dead material from the fire basically flooded the vineyard and uh you know, buried it in in a lot of ash. And at that point, I think Bob was just like over it, and and Eric came in and and bought it off him. And then there was a lot of reclamation work, you know, try to get it back up and running. But I've always thought it just to be such a beautiful vineyard. I mean, it's a neat place. But that's true with a lot of Arizona vineyards, man. I mean, it's the diurnal shifts, the the struggle that the vines go through. They're just the wines here are very unique.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

Corey, let's jump back to the Genesis story of rubrics. Um you decided to obviously sort of reimagine why you had started with burning tree cellars now on your own. Let's briefly talk about the name. Sure.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

Yeah, so I I that's the first thing people ask me because if you look at the the logo, which I could show you actually here. Let's do this. So if you look at the logo, so that's the logo, which my daughter designed. I mean, I kind of pointed her in the right direction, which a follow up.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

We'll put up the art on the uh show notes so people can see it.

SPEAKER_02 26:56

There you go. Yeah, so rubrics is rubrics is a playoff two word. So as you know, when you when you measure sugar in an aqueous solution, which we do with grape juice all the time, we always want to know what the sugar is because that you know converts to alcohol and body and et cetera, et cetera. It's one of the many things we look at as winemakers. Uh when you write that as a chemical equation, uh we well, we utilize the bricks scale, and uh it's you know it's named other things in different countries and and breweries use the Play-Doh scale, but it's all kind of the same stuff. But when you write that in a chemical equation, it's a degree symbol BX, so 24 degrees bricks, right? And then there's the word rubrics, R-U-B-R-I-C-S, which uh most commonly are used by teachers as kind of an aid to grade, you know, a kid. Let's say that you write a paper and a teacher has to say, okay, does this did he learn this? Did he cover this? Did he talk about this? A, B, C, D. So that lesson has a rubric, right? But more simply put, a rubric is basically like a principle or how something's supposed to be done. You know, everything has a rubric, like to say fly fishing, there's rubrics for it, how it's supposed to be done. So I just thought rubrics, same kind of thing. These wines are our rubrics to what we think Arizona wine should be. I don't know, and I kind of regret doing it because I have to explain it probably 20 times a fucking day. But uh, you know, at the end of the day, I think people think it's a pretty cool logo and a pretty cool idea. So yeah, that's the way we went there. And you know, we're blessed uh to be able to make these wines, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

Now, Corey, do you sell the wines at Page Brinks or do you have your own place?

SPEAKER_02 28:26

Um no, we have a taste room in Old Town Cottonwood. So it's at the former Burning Tree location. So ironically speaking, because we are grandfathered in, and and as you know, in Arizona, you have to have five acres or your own production facility, or you have to be part of a you could stack a license at a facility if you're doing a uh thing. Well, Burning Tree never had any of those, but we got our license back in 2012. So what I had to do to keep rubrics kind of alive to keep my right to self-distribute and keep my license was I basically had to uh uh do a DBA under Burning Tree Sellers LLC. So when I I bought out Mitch's wife, I basically did a DBA under that license to keep my license. And you know, the whole idea of doing just a mail in this only kind of changed. So we we got some investors and we remodeled it to the Burning Tree tasting room just so we can have a place to sell. It's uh located in Old Town Conwood, right next to Bocce at 1040 North Main Street. So we're in a really cool building here. It's actually used to be it's a historical building, it used to be a Liberty Garage. It's been here since the 20s. Used to be a Ford dealership for a while. There's actually these old glass panels in back, these old doors used to roll the cars in. The front patio has a really big uh planter that used to actually be gas pumps, like old school gas pumps. And then the whole back is this huge garage. I mean, originally we were talking about building a facility here, and I still want to do that, but again, it's just capital as in intensive as you well know. So until I win the lottery, which I play occasionally, or you know, I meet a friend that's willing to you know throw away most of their fortune. That's how wineries work. It's gonna be a pipe dream till then, you know. Let's talk about the wines that you make.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

How many skews and what do you focus on?

SPEAKER_02 30:09

Depends on the vintage. So we do anywhere from 16 to 25 different wines in a year, all types, generally one to two roses, you know, Rhone driven. So the one rose or house rose villages is uh driven with uh cunois, with a little grenache, and then we usually do a kind of an artist series labeled. I'll explain that in a sec. Uh, we do a lot of single varietal wines, which if you look at look at these labels, that's what our single varietal label looks like, which you know, I have a couple Roussons there. We do Syrah's, Grenache, Maved, 100% cunois, white wines, and with behind me, all kinds of stuff. And then behind me are our blend wines, which are a little bit different labeled. You've seen these because you I think you carry a couple of these at in uh they're basically just Rhone-inspired blends. Like, for instance, my village is uh white is kind of like a white Chateauneuf with Crenache Blanc leading the way. I have a uh Canyons white, which is kind of like a northern Rhone white. It's usually either uh Rousson and Beunnier or Roussan and Marsan. We have rivers was like rivers with a Chateauneuf de Pop, red canyons is a coat roti, you know, Syrah with Beunier. Anyway, there's a lot of different ones of those. And then the maps, they're topography maps of different areas in Arizona that have kind of inspired me over the years. Calibre Vineyards, one, the Page Springs area is another, village of Oak Creek, where I grew up running around as a kid, Fossil Creek, Sycamore Canyon. Anyway, those are all maps of those places. And then the back, we did this uh here's the rose one. If you look, the back has almost like it's the Forest Service sign. I'm just waiting for a cease and desist from the federal government, but they're not paying people, so it's probably fine. Here you do our artist series labels, which are kind of our best wines, and they're more they're more non-typical blends. You know, I'm uh I've been buying wines from uh uh Sinequinon for a couple years now. I don't anymore since I started rubrics, but I was inspired by a lot of those wines. And and so they're a little non-typical, you know, and and they're like I do a Syrah-based kind of blend that usually has Grenache Petit and a little vionier. I do a uh Grenache-based blend, same thing, a little bit of Syrah.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Manfred also is he digs graciano, which he does, you know, it does really well in Arizona.

SPEAKER_02 32:24

Well, I know he does he does it in the third twin, right? His second label. I've never seen it in in Sinequinon, but I I've never had his Graciano. We actually have some Graciano up here. That's awesome. I just racked it yesterday. Unfortunately, I can't buy any, but it's really good stuff. Well alas, you know, like I said, 1500 cases, I can't do everything. But anyway, the whites, the white on the artist label. So my daughter, she does all the my daughter does all the artwork for the uh animal labels. So there's like, you know, there's like cactus and the cardinals are white. The whites are always named after birds. The reds up here are kind of different animals. There's the sarong grenache. Uh they're more just you know, unique kind of blends, kind of our best stuff. They see the best French oak, and they see what was that? I just picked something up there. Okay. Yeah, so they just see longer aging, the best kind of French oak, the and they're just different, you know, like the the cardinal is like 30 or 5% charnae with Roussan, Malvasia, and Viognet. You know, it's just different kind of whites. I love different wines like that. But for the most part, we're a roan house. I mean, that's 90% of what we do is roan bridals. Mostly Calibri, I'd probably say that 65 to 70 percent of our fruit comes from that vineyard. And then northern Arizona vineyards, too, we use quite a bit of. Uh, whenever I can get my hands on good fruit, I will, you know.

SPEAKER_01 33:35

I'm gonna pull on this thread a bit about interesting and unusual wines per se. I got a chance to rub elbows with you last year at the governor's cup. I think you took home best wife for the Malvasia, if I remember correctly. Or were you pouring the Malvasia? Remind me.

SPEAKER_02 33:51

We no, I don't think we were pouring the Malvasia. We were pouring Roussan, which we entered in and we got a we got something for the Rooson, I can't remember, but the one we won the best white for was a Guangc de Noir Grenache. That was this year, correct? Year before? Yeah. Okay, year before Malvasia. Yeah. So that's the only year I made it. And my original plan was I think I bought that originally for Burning Tree, but then Burning Tree kind of was fading out by then. So I kind of basically adjusted the fruit plan based on depletions. So I wanted to kind of deplete Burning Tree of its wines, and I want to have rubrics ready to open and go. And then we did that in January of 24, but rubrics kind of inherited a couple wines from Burning Tree just because of the nature of how things went. But the Malvasia, which we only made the first year, it was uh 100% Malvasia from Dos Padres Vineyard. We brought it in. I'm very aggressive off the press with Malvasia. Uh, same thing with Chardonnay and Vigne for different reasons, but Malvasia is very floral. If you're careful with it and you're delicate with it, it can be almost pungently floral, in my opinion, like rose petals and grandma's soap cabinet and so on and so forth. So, what we do off the press, I'm very I splash it really heavy from container to container when I move in it. You know, it'll I'll splash it in the container off the press, almost like a fire hydrant, get a lot of oxygen in there. Then it settles, you know, on plates for a day, and then we splash it into the fermentation vessel, same thing, very aggressive. And I think that blows off a lot of that, you know, overtly floral characters. With Viet Chardonnay, I do it to blow off a lot of the phenolics that those wines tend to have. But anyway, once once that's done, I barrel ferment my Malvasia, which again, uh, barrel ferments are warmer, they're a little more violent, they're blowing off a lot of aromatics, and I think that and also makes the wine a little creamier, a little richer. For me, I just like Malvasia like that. But it ended up winning uh best Malvasia that year, which is funny because I only made two barrels of it. And everyone's asking me if I'm making more. I have like two cases left. And it's funny, it like now it's starting to taste better than ever. It's all like lime sorbet and beautiful stuff, a little white lily, but not like perfume. But anyway, yeah, we made it the one year and probably won't make it again just because we want to focus on more of the roan stuff, you know. Although people will ask, you know, but there's enough Malvasia in the state, I think. Everyone makes Malvasia.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

Let's talk about the one that took home the award this year. Not a lot of people know that you can make white wine from red grapes.

SPEAKER_02 36:20

Yeah, I mean, well, all wine can be white, you know. So when we make rose at Page Springs, no matter what, I generally do about a 12 to 16 hour cold soak. Lately I've been doing a little more to get more color, but that was just where we were at the time. And and we bought in Deep Sky Grenache. Uh, Kim Asmondson grows great wine over on the bench right next to Arizona, uh right next to Buell Memorial Vineyard and Carlson Creek and Pillsbury. Anyway, I bought some Grenache from her as Tobless Creek clone. And, you know, it came in. It was a little light in color as Grenache has a tendency to be, you know, a lot of uh mold d'orange and different colored berries and stuff. So we de-stemmed it and we cold soaked it for about 12 hours, pressed it. And originally I was just gonna have it go into my my house rose, my village's rose. The original plan was to have 50 cunois, 50 Grenache, but it wound up being so damn good. And then after it was done fermenting and we kind of racked it off, its primary leaves, it had no color. So it was just it was just white, and it was so good. So we just kept it. I pulled 50 cases from that to make the first artist series rose, or in this case, Blanc de Noir. So, you know, the whites we make in the artist series are always named after birds. The reds are always different animals, Arizona animals. Well, with a rose, we wanted to do different flowers in Arizona, so we called it Sowaro. And uh my daughter did this beautiful watercolor of a Sowaro cactus blossom. Uh, we entered it, so I called the guy running the, I want to say Richard Rules, I called, and then he got me in touch with Chris, and I talked to them about, you know, where am I supposed to enter this wine? Am I supposed to enter it as a rose or should I enter it as a white? And I didn't want to take it anything away from anybody, you know, that are entering the white wines, because I think white wines are white wines, you know. So I entered the competition as a rose, and and that's where I put it. And during the competition, unbeknownst to me, Chris decided hey, they guess they pulled all the roses, they poured them all the roses for the judges on the table. And he thought mine didn't have any color, so he pulled it from the rose category. And then he put it in the white category, which is a much larger category, and it ended up winning best white wine in the state. So, you know, not without any controversy, these things happen, but I had nothing to do with it. So yeah, uh, I feel really bad for whoever got second place in the white wine competition, because I think that probably should be the true winner uh of that. But, you know, we'll take it. Every win's a win, and the wine's very good. But it's ironic when we make rose, you know, it comes out generally. You want your roses to be fresh, you know, and they come out generally in the spring. And uh the competition doesn't happen till December or January. So a lot of times, you know, you enter these wines, it's like the same thing happened here. It's like, oh, we won. We have four cases left. Awesome. Everyone's asking for it, you know. And I'm taking six of those home because, you know, I gotta have mine. It's just funny. But yeah, it was a great wine. I love rose. Personally, I I think roses, I enjoyed making rose more than other styles of wine and Blanc de Noirs just because I think they they are so challenging, they are finicky, they are prone to oxidize and you know, get stinky, they're prone to sulfide issues and stuff. So, really, I think there's a lot of work that goes into roses, but when they're good, they're great. They're so versatile. You drink them anytime. I don't know. I just love good rose, love making them. So to get that wine to have to people enjoy that wine, I was really honored for that. And I'm glad they're hearing the music, you know? Amazing. At the tasting room, Corey, do you just serve wine? Yeah, yeah. Well, wine. We also have some cheese plates. We have a charcuterie plate. There's non-alcoholic drinks. We bring sodas from this place in Georgia and stuff like that. But no, it's just wine t-shirts. We do live music. You know, it's just a that's all we can do. That's the only license we have is a 13. I was thinking about stacking a seven, but you know, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 40:05

I just going back to your roots. Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_02 40:08

I don't want to. There's no kitchen here. There's one bathroom. You know, it's like we could blow it up, but at the same time, it's just like I don't wanna, I don't want to manage that kind of I don't necessarily want to be a bar per se. I just want to kind of celebrate, you know, Arizona wine, Cottonwood as a community, you know, has been very good to us and important and to be part of it. You know, when I I've worn a lot of different hats in this business and I I actually built the uh stronghold tasting room when we opened it back in 2009, because my first thing I did when I when I started working for Eric was took over a remodel at Page Springs and I had to manage it. And then the following year, we added on a room and I did the whole budget design everything over this this room. So then they tasked me to build and remodel the Arizona Stronghold Tasting Room, and that was in 2009. And back then, this whole street was just like, you know, crackheads running around, boarded up, just not there's like two restaurants on the street and a clock shop, and that was like it, you know. And Conwood was really cool about over the last, you know, and that was 09. So over the last 15 years, really being cool with granting permits, not getting in the way, you know, because it there's a lot of shit when you're building things, you know, you got to go through the county or whatever. But Conwood was super cool. And uh just to see this whole area, you know, gentrify as you know, funny word, but you know, all these nice places here. You see, you know, bocce got built, Maynard, you know, took over that type place and eventually it was Merkin. Now it's just you know the fried chicken place, which is awesome. Maynard's place on the hill, which is just a behemoth, you know, crazy. But just to see what's happened to Cottonwood in its 10 years is uh pretty cool. And and then it's not only Main Street, you see it actually, you know, you see houses on the street side streets next to Main Street starting to be remodeled. You see people cleaning up, you know, it just it's good to see that the community is benefiting from the wine business and our efforts. And uh it's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

No, I think if you make a day trip or a to northern Arizona, you can just hang out in those two or three blocks on Main Street, and you have more than enough to do in one day. You might need two days just to cover your bases.

SPEAKER_02 42:12

There are a couple good uh hotels here as well. So I was like, I'd be so cool to buy the iron horse. There's this old hotel next to us that I think needs a revamp, but it's a beautiful little cool place. So uh Cottonwood's pretty cool. What are your hours of operation?

SPEAKER_01 42:25

When can people come see you?

SPEAKER_02 42:27

We're open pretty much every day except for like Easter, Christmas, those kind of days. But uh we open at noon and we close at seven on weekdays and open till nine o'clock on Fridays and Saturdays. And we have live music on Friday and Saturdays. Beautiful. Do you guys have a wine club, Corey? We do have a wine club. We wanted to simplify it. You know, there's a wine, a lot of wine clubs out there that do different levels and tiers and all that stuff. We just do two shipments a year, six bottles per shipment. You get 20% off store wide. So every time you come in, we do these really cool tasting flights. We made these custom boards from a local carpenter that, you know, you have four different wines and about it's like 50 milliliters per wine. So it's about seven ounces of wine, a little over. And uh those are five bucks for members, and usually they're like 16 to 22. Yeah. So we do two mandatory releases, spring and fall. Spring is going to be some whites and reds. Usually our artist series wines kind of make their uh debut there when they're usually a couple years old uh for the reds. The uh fall release is all red wines, six different reds, and then we have two optional releases. So summer release, which it's pickup only because it's too hot, is always our roses and kind of crisp whites. Uh usually it's like four bottles of wine and some food. Our first year last year, we did two roses, two whites, and there was uh a chunk of uh cheese from Cypress Grove in there and some flower crackers and some other things. And then the fall one, we usually do a really big red or a dessert wine. Sorry, the winter optional one. We did port, we did this really cool. Petite Syrah port that we had barrel for over five years. And uh we did that with some chocolate bars. So, you know, optional people don't have to buy those if they're part of the club. But just the spring and fall ones we make mandatory. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:11

If there's a restaurant tour listed to this, do you guys self-distribute or you have a distributor?

SPEAKER_02 44:16

So we have a distributor. Action wine is moving our villages lineup. So we have uh I call them our house wine. So there's villages red, villages white, and villages rose. Again, all Rhone varietals, kind of Chateau Neuve, Southern Rhone, Tavelle style wines. Outside of that, we self-distribute everything else. So everything else we will self-distribute.

SPEAKER_01 44:38

And where can people find your wines in the Phoenix Metro?

SPEAKER_02 44:41

You know, I asked for a list. I haven't got to it yet. I know F and B is one of those places. That's right. I know Enchantment up here. Again, like I need to get more on those guys and see where they're at. But they just started picking, they just picked up our wines in January. Yep. When I said mid to late January. So it's a relatively new thing. I know that they're talking and we're supposed to launch in most of the Whole Foods. Our rose is supposed to go in most of the Whole Foods in Scottsdale area. I think there's like five different stores that will see our rose. That's one to keep an eye on. But yeah, I'm gonna get more on that and see where those wines are going. But I've been so busy with bottling and racking. As you know, like the seller never stops, you know. Yeah, we're in the middle of uh racking right now. I just finished, which is always something I enjoy because I love getting all the dead yeast out of there. And it's just all the wines are clean, and now we're gonna finalize blending, and it goes into bottling seasons. And you know, like every year I just hope to finish bottling before fruit shows up. Where can people find you? Do you have an Instagram account? We have Rubrix Wines has an Instagram account. I quit social media a while ago. I think I was scrolling one day and it just took up too much of my time, and all of a sudden I came to like I started realizing like who gives a shit what Jody Foster thinks about something. And so I just I said I'm done with it. You know what? Everyone's so political on Instagram. You know, not so much Instagram, but Facebook. And it's just like, I don't know. I just think it's such a soul-sucking experience that I decided to get rid of it. I think it's a great tool for businesses to use, but personally, I just nah I'd rather have my anonymity and just be out there in the world in the ether.

SPEAKER_01 46:21

Well, Corey, before we say goodbye, I am gonna do another shameless plug for those people listening. We are, as you know, you're gonna come and hang out with us at FMB. So we are gonna do uh winemaker dinner with Corey. I believe it's June 26th, I want to say. It's on a Thursday at 6:30 p.m. We're gonna pour your wines and we're gonna break some bread. So I'm very excited to see you in the 10, Corey.

SPEAKER_02 46:44

Bet I'm I'm looking forward to it as well. I'd love to get together with Borhan and taste uh, I'll have a bunch of options to taste through so we can uh maybe pair some cool stuff.

SPEAKER_01 46:52

Gonna have to make a day trip. Corey, I so much appreciate your time. Thank you for having this conversation with me. Thank you, sir. And that brings us to the end of the show. But before we say ciao ciao, I wanted to let you know that if there are any questions about winemaking you'd like me to tackle on the pod, don't hesitate to email me at psst at povlamilic.com. That's P S S T at Pavlamilik.com. Also, if you duck the content and you know someone who would get value from it, please share it. And lastly, if you have been enjoying the show, head on over to wherever you listen, leave us a review, and subscribe. Until next time, this is your host, Pavlamilik.