Southwest Flavor Ep. 163 - Emily Spivey, MeMe Aguila

**Ron Arenas** (0:00)
Hey, good morning, everyone. Welcome to Southwest Flavor. Happy Tuesday to all of you. We have a great show for you today with my co-host Ron Kirk.

**Ronald D Kirk** (0:09)
Good morning, Ron.

**Ron Arenas** (0:09)
Good morning, how you doing?

**Ronald D Kirk** (0:11)
Oh, I'm doing okay. These snake calls getting up at 12 o'clock at night is killing me. Oh, okay.

**Ron Arenas** (0:16)
Well, good thing you're a young guy.

**Ronald D Kirk** (0:18)
Yes, let's go.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:19)
Yeah, I'll leave it at that.

**Emily Spivey** (0:21)
All right.

**Ron Arenas** (0:22)
Hey, so we have a great guest today.

**Emily Spivey** (0:24)
Who is it?

**Ron Arenas** (0:25)
She's sitting right next to you, but let me tell you, let me tell you who she is.

**Ronald D Kirk** (0:29)
Who is she?

**Ron Arenas** (0:31)
She's Emily from Old Pueblo Cellars, and it's Cellars as in?

**Emily Spivey** (0:39)
As in wine cellars.

**Ron Arenas** (0:40)
As in wine cellars.

**Ronald D Kirk** (0:42)
I would have never thought cellars.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:44)
I'm like, cellars?

**Ronald D Kirk** (0:45)
Interesting.

**Emily Spivey** (0:46)
Yeah.

**Ron Arenas** (0:46)
Well, good morning.

**Emily Spivey** (0:47)
Good morning.

**Ron Arenas** (0:49)
How are you doing today?

**Emily Spivey** (0:50)
I am pretty good.

**Ron Arenas** (0:51)
Fantastic. Thank you for coming on with us.

**Emily Spivey** (0:53)
Thank you for having me.

**Ron Arenas** (0:54)
Yeah. So tell us a little bit about Old Pueblo Cellars.

**Emily Spivey** (0:57)
Oh, Old Pueblo Cellars is a local Arizona winery where our main tasting room is tucked up off of Oasis and kind of I-10. And so if you get off of I-10 at Twin Peaks, you're about three minutes away.

**Ron Arenas** (1:10)
Wonderful. Okay.

**Emily Spivey** (1:11)
So yeah, it's a cute little spot.

**Ron Arenas** (1:13)
Yeah. And you actually have about an acre there, you said, that you have?

**Emily Spivey** (1:18)
We have about an acre and some change of grapes actually growing on the property.

**Ron Arenas** (1:22)
Wow.

**Emily Spivey** (1:22)
There's five different varietals, and it's real cute.

**Ron Arenas** (1:28)
That's just, I mean, to me, that has to be really tough to even try to attempt to grow grapes here in this arid desert climate. And we're only, where you're at in Marana, you're probably right around 2,100 feet, probably.
So you're not very high.

**Emily Spivey** (1:49)
Exactly. Yeah.
And so there's definitely varietals that do better than others.

**Ron Arenas** (1:55)
That can take the heat a little bit better? Yes.

**Emily Spivey** (1:57)
Yes, absolutely. And so a lot of it was a little bit of an experiment, trying to see which grapes would grow and see how it all went. If I think if we could go back in time and redo it, we would plant 100 percent temper neo.
That one is definitely the grape of the desert.

**Ron Arenas** (2:14)
All right. And I'm sure that like the soil and everything that goes into it affects the taste of the grapes, right?

**Emily Spivey** (2:24)
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And even just year to year, the soil changes makes a big difference in the outcome of the wine.

**Ron Arenas** (2:31)
Oh, wow. Which is kind of cool. Yeah.
So do you have to put like supplements and everything into the soil?

**Emily Spivey** (2:39)
Not necessarily. We kind of just let the vines do what they're doing with the grapes, specifically in Tucson. I don't know if they're doing that at the Vineyard in Wilcox.

**Ronald D Kirk** (2:48)
Okay. You have a lot of caliche out there at your winery?

**Ron Arenas** (2:52)
Yes.

**Ronald D Kirk** (2:54)
With me, I'm a landscape company. The problem we have is a lot of plants or trees won't grow in caliche. So how do you get grapes to grow in it?

**Emily Spivey** (3:01)
We dug through it all.

**Ron Arenas** (3:03)
You broke it up. Really? Yeah.

**Ronald D Kirk** (3:06)
That's a lot of work.

**SPEAKER_6** (3:07)
It was a big process.

**Ron Arenas** (3:09)
A lot of jag hammers and a big sweat.

**SPEAKER_7** (3:11)
Yeah, exactly.

**Ronald D Kirk** (3:13)
And do you get, I mean, the bushel, I guess is what you call them, right? Grapes?

**MeMe Aguila** (3:18)
I'm not really sure.

**Ronald D Kirk** (3:19)
Yeah. I mean, do you get a lot of them in the grapes?
I mean, are they big or are they like the ones you buy in the store?

**Emily Spivey** (3:25)
Yeah. So the grape size themselves is actually definitely on the smaller size. There is variation between the different varietals, but by and large, wine grapes are quite a bit smaller than your grocery store grape.