The culinary center of the blazing new Verde Valley, Arizona wine scene is the fantastic Asylum restaurant in Jerome -theasylum.biz- where I had a long liquid dinner with owner Paula Woolsey. This is the Wild West wine frontier of America, and I played a bit of a role in the early days several years ago when I spent a lot of hang time at the first winery in the area, the late great Echo Canyon. Their first Syrahs showed that the area was capable of making world class wines, and now with Page Springs and Merkin established, and PlumpJack moving in, the Verde Valley has a bright ethanolic future.
