Richard Ruelas

The Republic | azcentral.com

The officer pulled the car over somewhere between Oak Creek and Clarkdale. Inside, he spotted two barrels filled with wine, a substance newly made illegal in Arizona. That traffic stop would put the winery owner in jail and end the operations of a thriving vineyard in the Verde Valley.

This was at the beginning of the 1900s. By the beginning of the 2000s, the Verde Valley would once again be the home of thriving winery operations. A dinner scheduled for Thursday, June 16, as part of the Tilted Earth festival organized by Page Springs Cellars, will aim to link the two eras.

The illegal wine merchant from the 1900s was Henry Schuerman. When the German immigrant moved to the area in the 1880s, he noticed that grapes grew wild along Oak Creek. He decided to plant a vineyard alongside his other crops.

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He was not the first to grow grapes in Arizona. Cultivation stretched as far back as the missionary Father Eusebio Kino, who arrived in Arizona in the 1690s.

But Schuerman appears to be the first to make it a business.

The state instituted Prohibition in 1915, years ahead of the U.S. constitutional amendment. The law gave leeway for personal use of intoxicants. But not for the sale.

So the fact that Nola Dixon and H.F. Thayer had nearly 100 gallons in their vehicle, according to a 1917 Prescott Weekly Journal-Miner article available through the Library of Congress, resulted in arrests for the three men involved.

In August 1917, Schuerman pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months in jail and a fine of $300. The two men caught with the wine were sentenced to 30 days and $100 fines.

By December, Gov. Thomas Campbell pardoned Schuerman, according to a Weekly Journal-Miner article. The governor, according to the article, pardoned him partly because two of his sons were serving in the Army and a third some was married, meaning there was no one around to care for his property.

The article said the governor also considered that Schuerman was 66 and that jail was hurting his health.

“I’m through,” Schuerman said, according to the clipping. “Never more will I transgress the law, even technically. Governor Campbell will have no reason to regret issuing me this pardon.”

But wine fans may regret his arrest.

Schuerman took advantage of what seemed an ideal wine-grape growing location: warm days, cool nights, hilly terrain. Those same elements would draw winemakers to the region decades later, people like Eric Glomski, who, after working at a winery in California, started Page Springs Cellars in Cornville, planting his vineyard on a hill that sloped down toward Oak Creek.

Glomski said he had heard lore about a winery that operated at Red Rock Crossing, a few miles northeast of his winery.

One day, he said, a man approached him at the winery and told him he had grown vines out of cuttings from the original Schuerman vine. He told Glomski he wanted to make wine out of the grapes.

That man was an attorney named Stephen Schwartz. He had heard about the history as well and found a relative of the family named Sherman Loy. Loy told him he had been living on the property where the vineyards had been.

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“He said the family preserved a vine for generations,” Schwartz said. “He had that vine out in his garden.”

Schwartz said it took him some visits before he got the courage up to ask Loy for permission to clip the vine. He agreed and Schwartz started planting them on his property.

Schwartz asked Glomski to make wine out of the grapes he had harvested from the vines. Glomski said there were too few grapes for him to use the winery’s machinery. One night, he said, he and his wife, Gail, plucked the grape stems and crushed them by hand.

The wine, which Glomski figured was a Zinfandel, was not great. Glomski said the grapes were picked too early. Schwartz agreed and called the wine “insipid.”

Still, the project was about the history more than the wine.

Glomski continued researching the Scheurman winery story at the Sedona Heritage Museum.

He thought that a wine dinner honoring Schuerman would make a great kickoff event for the third annual Tilted Earth festival. Chefs agreed to make dishes that might have existed in the 1900s. The menu includes smoked trout and elk shepherd’s pie.

He posted the event online, calling it the Henry Schuerman Commemorative Wine Dinner.

“The second I posted it,” Glomski said, “one of the family members reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, we’re really excited you are commemorating our great-grandfather.’ ”

Glomski has since spent time with family members. A collection of family photos will be projected during the dinner. And Glomski has read letters and journals Schuerman wrote that he said will make next year’s Schuerman dinner even richer with history.

Glomski expects close to two dozen Schuerman relatives at the dinner at the Blazin’ M Ranch in Cottonwood.

Glomski said Schuerman’s notes indicated his vineyards were producing 125,000 pounds of grapes each year. Some of that he was making into wine; some of that he was selling to families who were making their own wine.

Such history showed him devastating Prohibition was, Glomski said.

“This guy was a really successful entrepreneur,” he said. “Had Prohibition not killed his business, it’s likely his descendants would have continued it. And who knows how the industry would have developed had that happened.”

Henry Schuerman Commemorative Wine Dinner

What: Charcuterie and cheese reception followed by five-course dinner with wine pairings from Pillsbury Wine Company, Chateau Tumbleweed, Fire Mountain Winery, Burning Tree Cellars, Page Springs Cellars and Arizona Stronghold Vineyards.

When: 6:30 p.m. Thursday, June 16.

Where: Blazin' M Ranch, 1875 Mabery Ranch Road, Cottonwood.

Admission: $80 in advance; $85 on the day of the dinner.

Details: tiltedearthfestival.com.

Tilted Earth Festival

What: Festival with music, food trucks, art and kids activities. Admission includes five wine-tasting tickets; Arizona craft beer also will be available. Friday's headliners are Sister Sparrow and the Dirty Birds; Saturday's is Taj Mahal.

When: 5 p.m.-midnight Friday-Saturday, June 17-18.

Where: Riverfront Park, 1284 E. River Front Road, Cottonwood.

Admission: $52 for a single day in advance; $58 on the day. Two-day passes, VIP tickets and camping permits available;

Details: tiltedearthfestival.com.