Greetings from the Vortex! I’m currently posting from Sedona, Arizona, home to stunning rock formations, a spiritual/energy vortex or two, and a big rock formation called the Bell, which some people believe houses a fleet of alien spaceships that will one day take over the Earth. Hizzah!
You’d think that a state that’s home to a world-famous resort town like Sedona (to say nothing of the Grand Canyon) might be rather progressive when it comes to bringing in your own juice to dinner, but alas, that’s not the case. A call to El Tovar, the Grand Canyon’s ‘fine dining’ restaurant (tip: skip it), revealed that BYOB is against the law. All bottles served require a sticker that proves the bottle was purchased by the license holder. Interesting.
Now this may just apply to operators in national parks, but it still struck me as strange, especially the sticker part. How easy it is to forget that California is a bubble when it comes to this sort of thing. (My Pennsylvania friends can now chime in.)
And yes, I did bring along a case of tasty wine on our southwest roadtrip. But we’ll be drinking it all in hotel rooms.
(Below: Hofstatter’s elegantly spicy 2005 Kolbenhof Gewurztraminer with a the fake fireplace raging in the background)
Of course, the real reason to be here is the Grand Canyon:
spume 
You should probably avoid Utah. In many states, 19th century
attitudes shaped laws, or the the powerful distributor lobby did.
Either way, wine loving adults of the 21st century lose.
I once brought a bottle of ’98 Verduno Barbaresco to Yellowstone’s Lake Hotel.
Nobody said shit, so it must be an AZ thing.