Kokopelli Winery

Don still remembers being a six-year-old boy and making his first batch of wine with his grandpa. “We didn’t have the same equipment as we did back then, we used a basket press,” recalled Don. This is when Don has his first experience as being a wine maker when he asked his Grandpa as a little boy, “How am I doing,” and his Grandpa looked on in encouragement and told him not so bad. Don’s mother was the 2nd generation winemaker in America from the Minchella family. “We don’t know how many generations we have back in Italy except for the fact that there are one too many to count,” Don said.

When Carol and Don made the move to Arizona to start the winery he was fulfilling a great promise that he made to his mother that one day he would grow her a vineyard and that is just what he did. “My mother was an amazing grower and her recipes for the different wines were great as well,” said Don. Which who wouldn’t believe him especially if you are one of our Sweet Lucy lover’s that was his mother’s recipe.

When Don was looking to produce the first batch of wine he knew that he needed a name. He wanted something that was catchy that was South Western with an Italian flair. This is when he and Carol came up with the idea of Kokopelli. Don found that when he started researching that he had picked the absolute best name for the winery. “I enjoyed all of the different legends that Kokopelli had, but the way I see it they really are all one legend,” Don said, “Each legend also played a part in what we were trying to accomplish through our winery.”