Remember the proverbial village that is so valuable in raising a child?
Turns out it’s pretty handy for the winemaking industry too.
Case in point: two Elgin wineries that were among the big winners at the 2025 azcentral Arizona Wine Competition.
Los Milics came away with a 2025 Growers Cup for best rosé—Ita’s 2024, a light rosé that is a blend of grenache, tempranillo and vermentino grapes.
Twisted Union brought home a Growers Cup for best dessert wine with its 2022 Bake Sale—a blend of tempranillo, petit syrah and mourvedre.
Both wineries are relative newcomers on the scene, though quite different in scale of operations. Pavle and Ita Milic established their vineyard in Elgin in 2019 and opened their tasting room in 2022. Kati Spencer started Twisted Union in 2020. Los Milics grows its own grapes, has two vineyards totaling some 50 acres, a tasting room, a full-service restaurant and overnight accommodations in Elgin, as well as other tasting rooms in Scottsdale and Tucson. Twisted Union buys its grapes from other growers and have a mom-and-pop tasting room in Elgin.
One undeniably common denominator is how neither winemaker could have made it to this point without more than a little help from his and her friends and neighbors.
“There’s a lot of collaboration that happens around here, and that’s the beauty of this particular region,” Spencer said.
Spencer had direct input from four other winemakers in the blending of Bake Sale. It started with tempranillo grapes grown by Brett Wagner and neutral grape spirits to arrest fermentation and fortify the wine. Dominic Burke and Jeni Davis helped through the middle stage, during which it was decided to blend in some petit syrah and Mourvedre table wine to add complexity, deepen the color and give it more of a varietal flavor. Then, recognizing that the addition of the dry table wines had diluted the sugar and alcohol content, Spencer brought in the Big Kahuna: Karyl Wilhelm, founder of Wilhelm Family Vineyards in Sonoita.
“I kind of felt like I had to bring in the local expert on dessert wines,” she said. “Karyl’s been making dessert wines for 20 years, and this truly is one of her specialties.”
Wilhelm suggested the addition of petit syrah concentrate to boost the sweetness and some additional neutral grape spirits to bring the alcohol content up to the 18-19 percent range.
“Karyl was willing to sit down with me and do the math and roll up her sleeves and come over here and help me through these different stages,” Spencer said. “As a newer winemaker, a lot of this is familiar territory for me being around the industry, but not necessarily something I was ready to drive on my own, and I’m just so grateful that we had so much support from people in getting this wine to bottle. The fact that we turned around and won this Growers Cup, there’s a lot of people that need to be acknowledged.”
Milic expressed similar sentiments about his journey from Scottsdale-area restaurateur to award-winning winemaker. It began when he started showcasing Arizona wines in his Scottsdale restaurant FnB, which led to a friendship with Todd and Kelly Bostock of Dos Cabezas.
“I remember Todd came in one day to have lunch, and I don’t know why I couldn’t just come out of the closet and say, ‘Hey, I want to learn how to make wine. Can you teach me?’ So the only thing that came out of my mouth was, ‘Hey, how much does a barrel cost?’
“He knew exactly what I was talking about and picked up on it. We made a deal that allowed me to rub elbows with him to create my own private label, but I didn’t have to come out of pocket. It was basically, let me come and hang out with you, from pruning all the way up to the bottling, and I’ll be able to get a better perspective and understanding of the whole cycle.”
One thing led to another, and that first vintage of Los Milics Oliver’s blossomed into a business partnership with Mo Garfinkle, the purchase of a vineyard in Elfrida, planting the vineyard in Elgin, and ultimately construction of the production facility, tasting room and casitas.
Milic, who spent four years working in the restaurant industry in Napa Valley, said he was struck during that time by the sense of camaraderie and common purpose: “Those people were intelligent enough to know that each one’s success was everyone’s success.” He says that same spirit pervades Arizona winemaking.
“I stand on the shoulders of people like Todd and Kelly, Kent and Lisa Callaghan (Callaghan Vineyards), James Callahan (Rune Wines), Maynard (James Keenan, Caduceus Cellars), even though he’s on the other side of the world in northern Arizona,” Milic said. “All of them.”
Spencer likens it to a family: “At times dysfunctional, but usually very loving. I love being a part of this industry and this community, all these winemakers who are more than willing to share their knowledge.”
While the Growers Cup awards were the cream of the crop for Sonoita-Elgin wineries in 2025, they were far from the only distinctions.
Los Milics also won Best of Class Orange for Norita’s 2023; gold for Jules’ 2023 vermentino; two silvers and four bronzes.
Twisted Union won Best of Class Sangiovese for its Charm School 2022; one silver; and one bronze.
Callaghan Vineyards won Best of Class Sparkling for its Barrett’s 2023; four golds for its La Osa grenache 2019, Rhumb Line aglianico 2021, Rhumb Line aglianico 2022 and Tannat 2022; 10 silvers; and five bronzes.
Deep Sky Vineyard won Best of Class Grenache for its Stellar 2022, Best of Class Mourvedre/Monastrell for Supernova 2021 and Best of Class Viogner for Aurora 2023; three silvers; and one bronze.
Dos Cabezas won gold for its Meskeoli white blend 2023; six silvers; and five bronzes.
Spencer and Milic both acknowledged the increasingly stellar caliber of the competition and the growing quality of Arizona wines.
“It made me a little shaky to be standing among the people that I’ve admired for so long when we were waiting for them to announce (the winners),” Spencer said. “I’m not sure I can find a way to articulate how exciting this is for us.”
Los Milics is no stranger to awards—it won the Governors Cup for best overall wine in 2024—but Milic understands their fickle nature: “I welcome the awards, I love it, I do celebrate it for like five minutes and then put it away and forget about it, because I also know how hard it is to do this, and I admire so many people and enjoy so many wines that were not on that list.”