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Bruce Misamore Turns Water into Wine
Four years ago, we met Bruce Misamore, who had converted a 45,000-gallon water storage tank on his Uptown property into a 1,500-bottle wine cellar. Since then, the cellar has been profiled in Wine Spectator (July 2012), and Bruce has become part owner of Javelina Leap Vineyard & Winery. As for the cellar, which was designed by Blue Boelter Design and contracted by Doug Wade Construction, it’s certainly a bit more full since our last visit. Bruce now has about 500 bottles of wine compared to the initial 150; the majority of his collection is in Houston. Bruce, who is retired, and his wife Janet divide their time between the red rocks of Sedona and their grandkids in Texas. “I have wines from the ’70s and ’80s – ports from the 1960s – in Houston that I’m trying to drink up,” he says. “I don’t want to transport them to Sedona. I did that once, driving 22 hours from Ohio to Texas with a car full of wine. I won’t do it again.”
The types of wine in Bruce’s cellar have also changed. He originally estimated only 10 percent of his collection would come from Arizona, but now his shelves are stocked with wines from Page Springs Cellars, Javelina Leap, Alcantara Vineyards and Arizona Stronghold. Naturally Bruce has a soft spot for Javelina Leap’s wines. He helped create the winery’s 2011 Prospector’s Blend, which sold out. This is the first time Bruce has had a stake in a winery or been part of the winemaking process, and it’s obvious he loves it. “We bottled the 2012 Prospector’s Blend this spring, and all 200 cases sold out in two or three months,” says Bruce. “I don’t have a single bottle.”
As for the cellar, Bruce and Janet discovered the water tank after they purchased their home in January 2008. They discussed turning the tank into a swimming pool or a media room, but they settled on a wine cellar. The couple bought the tank for $5 from Arizona Water Company, and construction began on the cellar in October 2009. It was completed in June 2010. Bruce says the tank was built in the 1950s and abandoned in the 1990s. Bruce designed the cellar to accommodate his penchant for purchasing cases of wine, including ’09 and ’10 Bordeaux futures that Bruce will age for a minimum of 10 years before uncorking. But he also buys wines to drink now. “Bordeaux is my preference, but I love wines from Sonoma and Paso Robles [Calif.],” he says. “Buying top names isn’t my style. I buy for value, and I buy good, drinkable wines.”
You enter the cellar through ornate iron gates and alder doors. The tasting room is located at the front of the 45-foot-long water tank. The textured, striated walls in the room were created out of gunite to mimic a red rock cave. Lanterns hanging from the low ceiling and a copper sink are a nod to the Verde Valley’s mining heritage. An antique-style bottle opener stands next to the sink on a Brazilian-granite countertop. A painted-concrete floor, six stools made from wine barrels and Riedel glasses complete the room. Walk through stained-glass doors created by local artist Linda Garrison and you are inside the cellar, which is kept at 57 degrees. (Three feet of soil on top of the tank helps with insulation.) There’s a granite-topped island in the center of the cellar, and at the end of the space Bruce showcases a semiprecious stone and glass sculpture titled Mother Lode by artist Lucy Paradise. Niches hold two enormous bottles of Handprint Merlot from The Meeker Vineyard, signed by winemaker Charlie Meeker to commemorate the opening of Bruce’s cellar.
Despite his love of wine, Bruce, who attended Bowling Green State University in his native Ohio on a music scholarship (he plays tuba and string base), says he doesn’t drink wine every night. “It’s mainly something we do when we have friends over,” he says. Based on the amount of entertaining space in his home, including an eight-top table on the patio outside the cellar with views of Capitol Butte, we get the feeling he has a lot of friends.
Tom Pitts says…
Bruce’s wines reflect his interests, travels and gregarious nature. He spent several years in Moscow and London, where he attended a number of the London-based International Wine & Food Society functions, cementing his love for Bordeaux and port. In Houston, he became quite active in the Brotherhood of the Knights of the Vine, the American wine society, which no doubt ultimately contributed to his interest in our local wines. Here in Sedona, he is now an active member of the Confrérie de la Chaîne des Rôtisseurs. In addition to a wide array of Javelina Leap wines and a deep vertical selection of Page Springs wines, he is now having all of his Bordeaux futures purchases shipped here. Serious oenophiles will note cases of Château Talbot and Château Gloria, the Saint-Julien properties often overlooked by the press, including the 2009 (rated 92 by Wine Spectator and 93 by Robert Parker) and 2010 (90 Wine Spectator and 92 Parker) Gloria vintages, along with the 2005 J.P. Moueix (the Pétrus second label), among others. California products include Eberle syrah from Paso Robles, Mounts grenache and old-vine zins from the Dry Creek Valley. Duckhorn wines from Napa, Spain, Chile and Argentina are also represented in treasures such as a 1996 Faustino Gran Reserva.
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