Since our first planting in 2004, Page Springs Cellars has always been grounded in experience, truth, and quality—whether that relates to the earth in which our vines are rooted or our philosophy that wine is by the people, for the people. Stay grounded, be connected, and live for meaningful experiences.

Most importantly, trust yourself. Trust your Palate.

At Page Springs Cellars, our goal is to create delicious wines that express the unique character of our landscape. We trust that our wines and winemaking convey our philosophies concerning family, education and living life to its fullest.

We believe to make great wine we must take just as much responsibility for the lands we steward as the community we live in.

We feel strongly that growing grapes, making wine and raising a glass is a cultural ritual that fosters friendship, brings together families, and unites communities. Good wine is not strictly the esoteric fare of nobility: Wine is for the people.

We desire to share our passion and interest in wine with everyone from the first time sipper to the seasoned enthusiast. Providing academic and hands on experiences are a big part of this desire to help people expand and trust their own senses.

Land, wine, grapes, friends, family, education, and fulfillment: Wine is within everyone’s reach!

Enjoy,

Eric Glomski, Owner and Director of Winegrowing

Sustainability Practices

Philosophy

Our commitment to our planet and community was broadly expressed in our original Mission Statement from 2004: “We believe to make great wine we must take just as much responsibility for the lands we steward as the community we live in.” It is one thing to say this…it is another thing to really do it. For nearly two decades we have been working toward striking a balance between creating and running a financially viable business while constantly reducing our footprint on the planet. Our relationship with the land we live on is like any other relationship: there needs to be both give and take. All too often, humans tend to take from the earth but not give back. (Just think if this was a marriage and one of the partners always ate all the food in the fridge and never bought any themselves. Imagine that same partner partying every night and never cleaning up afterward and the other would always have to deal with the mess the next morning. Picture that partner smoking cigarettes in the house all the time with the other always having to inhale all the secondhand smoke… How long would that relationship last??) In the end, it is not about whether the planet will survive, it is all about whether humans will survive and what the quality of that survival will be. We are part of the ecology of this planet, and we have the means to play an enhancing role rather than an over consumptive, destructive one. Simply put, it is our moral responsibility.

What are we doing about it?

We all know this doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a lot of work. Early on, PSC didn’t have the human power or money to tackle many of these challenges (we were just trying to keep our doors open) but as we grew and became more financially successful, we never forgot our mission and have plumbed resources back into our root philosophy. Reducing your footprint on the planet and seeking to fit in positively with your local ecology is a journey, not a destination. It is a never-ending process that you refine over time.

Our Current Practices

Energy/Electricity

• Wineries and their related business operations use a lot of power. In a state like Arizona with an average of 300 sunny days a year, photovoltaic electricity generation is a no-brainer, but the initial capital costs can be daunting. These systems obviously generate zero emissions (which is amazing) and save you money over time but often businesses can’t afford to make that leap. With the help of USDA grants and building the financial capacity of our company over time so we could garner a loan, PSC has installed a 125-kilowatt system (nearly 45 megawatts annually!) that generates all of our electricity on site (in addition to shading half of our parking lot!). We were in the black on this system within five years and the payback on carbon emission reduction is immense and will span the thirty-plus year life of the system. Additionally, because PSC is in a rural area and we have intermittent power outages in the winter and monsoon season, we are installing four Tesla batteries for backing up our most critical systems.

Solar Panels on above our Parking Lot

Solar Panels on our Main Winery Building

Solar Panels on our Crush Facility

Wastewater Processing

• In addition to the large use of electricity, our winery with its Tasting Room, Bistro, and Production facility (and the fifty or so people keeping things going) generates a lot of liquid waste. Think of all the winemaking, sinks, toilets, and dishwashers. All this liquid waste is processed on-site in our hybrid waste treatment system.
• The waste first goes through two large underground septic tanks for anaerobic digestion where bacteria (that do not need air) convert nitrogen into ammonia and organic acids and produce small quantities of methane gas and carbon dioxide.
• Next, the partially processed wastewater leaves the septic tanks and goes through two aerobic “bio-reactors” where sprinklers rain the effluent down over thousands of large, black plastic-honeycomb media that are covered with aerobic (air loving) bacteria, biofilm-colonies which consume nitrogen, phosphorus, and carbon and produce carbon dioxide. This decomposition process is considerably faster and more efficient than the anaerobic processes normally found in standard septic tank systems and process chemicals that anaerobic bacteria do not.
• Finally, the effluent leaves the bio-reactors and flows through four wetland tanks where cattails, sedges, lilies, and other water-loving plants grow. This final polishing gives us effluent that has standards that meet or exceed the best municipal treatment facilities in the state. This water is used to irrigate native mesquites and landscape planting on our winery estate.
• Additionally, our system is plumbed so that any of the effluent can be run through the system again for even more processing if need be.

Interpretive sign showing the layout of our Wastewater System

The Waste System Bio-Reactors

The “Honeycomb” Media

The Waste System Wetlands

Solid Waste

• Because we are a Vineyard, Winery, Tasting Room, and Bistro with a thriving Tours & Events business, we also generate a great deal of solid waste. This ranges from food scraps in our kitchen to related packaging and other items (such as disposable event and to-go food service containers and utensils) that do not have normal, municipal recycling service/pickup options associated with them in our area.
• To address this issue, we have changed many of our practices:
  • All our food scraps go into a composting program along with all the organic waste from our winemaking process (grape skins and seeds, lees, fermentation solids, etc.) and are actively composted at one of our vineyard sites. (We also encourage employees who can’t compost on their own to add their kitchen scraps to our “pile”.)
  • We now purchase pressed palm leave plates, bowls, and utensils for the majority of our events and to-go options and shred and compost them on-site as well.
  • For more information see this article in Smithsonian Magazine.
• All of the rich compost generated from this process gets used in our vineyards to bring organic nutrients to the system and to build soil tilth.

Our Tractor Turning the Compost Pile (steaming!)

Compost

Compost and Grape Skin (Pomace) Experiments in our Vineyard

Recycling

• A stroll around our property will quickly reveal our many recycling stations where we have made it easy for our guests and employees to effortlessly sort their waste materials. These repositories separate glass, plastic and aluminum, cardboard, and garbage. Our staff collect and sort these materials daily and move them to our main collection area.
• In addition to recycling what our guests buy on site or bring with them, all departments in our company collect and sort paper, cardboard, glass as well as batteries.
• Each week, our local recycling business, Sedona Recycles, picks up all these materials, except for trash, and transfers them to recycling facilities.
• Check out Sedona Recycles for more information.

Glass Recycling

One of our customer Recycling Collection Areas

Multi Recycling Bins

The list goes on!

It would take pages and pages to detail all the other little things we do (and want to do) to continue moving toward our ecological goals. We have interpretive signs all around our property educating our guests about our green efforts and we strive to educate visitors on local conservation issues such as water and wildlife conservation. We are dark sky certified (don’t you always want to be able to see the Milky Way? Most people can’t!). We have spent a great deal of energy fencing individual blocks in our vineyards instead of fencing around the whole perimeter (which would be much less expensive). This allows wildlife to pass through and gain access to the river that most of our vineyards sit above. We also keep many areas on our Winery property wild to preserve habitat for native species.

Going forward, we hope to explore more permeable paving on our land.

The sustainability of our supply chain is always on our minds. In particular, we are constantly striving to find better recycled packaging for our wine. We currently use plant-based, sustainably produced sugarcane corks and are ever on the watch for 100% recycled glass bottles (our current producer is at 38% recycled and has the goal of hitting 50% by 2030). Our labels are, unfortunately, not printed on recycled paper. All our experiments reproducing our labels on recycled stock have yielded very poor artistic results – but we are still trying!

Page Springs produces the majority of our wines from our Estate Vineyards. Three northern and one southern vineyard make up this quartet. Each site has unique climate and soil characteristics, as well as differing grape varieties that contribute to our small-lot, vineyard designate program, and our many complex blends. All are managed by our vineyard team in conjunction with our winemakers to produce wines that uniquely express the ecology of each site. Additionally, we source grapes from other top vineyards in the state, such as Pillsbury, Bruzzi, Keeling-Schaefer, Deep Sky, and Coronado.

Estate Vineyards