More than a musician: Maynard James Keenan champions Arizona wine

By the time Maynard James Keenan moved to Arizona, he had fame and a seemingly ideal life with wealth, awards and throngs of adoring fans worldwide.

However, Keenan wanted another kind of existence when he landed in Jerome in 1995.

“I came here to get the fuck out of LA. I had no interest in living there,” Keenan says of the motivation. It had nothing to do with becoming a winemaker in the desert.

But over the last three decades, the Grammy winner has not only started several wine labels, but also accelerated the growth of the state’s budding industry, drawing new sets of eyes and palates.

Keenan’s wines have earned accolades in wine competitions around the globe, commanding the respect of serious aficionados. His Caduceus Cellars and Merkin Vineyard wines are poured in restaurants, sold at grocery stores like Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods Market and are at the centerpiece of tasting rooms in Old Town Scottsdale, Jerome and the new destination spot Merkin Vineyards Hilltop Winery & Trattoria in Old Town Cottonwood — the heart of Verde Valley wine country.

But that’s just the surface.

A co-op that served as a platform for young wineries, a college wine program that promises to churn out generations of future winemakers and a viticulture influence that is transforming the industry from literally the ground up are the Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer frontman’s behind-the-scenes contributions to Arizona wine.

“These things all tied together is the synergistic energy that helps the industry in many different ways,” says Callaghan Vineyards founder and winemaker Kent Callaghan, whose family planted their first vineyard in southern Arizona in 1990. “There’s a lot of different threads to his tapestry.”

Typically, business owners avoid creating entities that will generate competitors. However, that’s not the sentiment in the close-knit Arizona wine world and Keenan is a prime example.

“He recognizes the value of an emerging wine region and helping out each other,” says Pavle Milic, winemaker for Los Milics Vineyards and co-owner of FnB Restaurant. “(He believes that) your success is my success and the success of the whole state.”

And it all dates back to good old fashioned barbecues with friends.

Wine epiphany and theft on tour

Keenan was in his twenties and living in Boston when his appreciation for wine started. A close friend would host cookouts and pair dishes with Italian wines. There, Keenan realized the connection between wine and good food, and the intangible experience elicited by the pairing.

This prepared him to enter another level of awareness when he was given a 1992 Silver Oak Cabernet Sauvignon from friend Tori Amos. He calls it a "conscious epiphany." While on tour, Keenan noticed the difference between what the band was drinking - Bud Light - and what managers and booking agents were sipping - wine.

“I wanted to know what they were drinking from the nice glasses. I surely paid for it,” Keenan recalls, admitting he ended up “stealing it from the manager’s office.”

When he settled in the Verde Valley — the north-central Arizona region home to the Verde River, Sedona and Jerome — the terrain reminded him of thriving wine regions in Italy, Spain and the Adelaide Hills in Australia. The idea of planting a vineyard and making wine struck him.

“Growing up in a farming community in Michigan, you recognize when you see apricot trees blooming and olive trees growing. You make connections with the environment and agriculture going on,” Keenan says. “It made sense.”

Keenan founded Caduceus Cellars and released his first wines under that label in 2004. He also co-founded Arizona Stronghold Vineyards with Eric Glomski of Page Springs Cellars. That partnership ended a decade ago and Keenan went on to start Merkin Vineyards and create wines under his Four Eight Wineworks label and a lineup of canned Puscifer wines.

Keenan owns multiple vineyards across Arizona which provide fruit for not only Caduceus and Merkin but other wineries as well. And his restaurant ventures allow him to revisit what happens when wine unites with food.

When Keenan set out to make a honey wine, he carbonated it. It was refreshing and delicious and the first thing that came to mind was that it would “fit like a glove” with fried chicken. The result is the new Four 8 Chicken restaurant, which opened in Cottonwood in March and showcases his spicy fried chicken and sparkling mead.

“It’s connected. The wine and the food are symbiotic entities. You can't really separate them,” Keenan says.

Just a few steps away, Keenan's Trattoria features produce from his garden and greenhouses in dishes that pair with his wines. Positioned on a hilltop overlooking Cottonwood, the restaurant-winery-vineyard is a grand structure complete with a gelateria on the ground floor and a rustic tram that takes visitors up the hill to the restaurant — a nod to the area’s copper mining past.

Since opening in the fall of 2023, it has become a distinctive focal point and attraction that represents the area’s past and present while visually taking Arizona wine country to another level.

“He’s responsible for a large amount of infrastructure and the first to have a cornerstone place in Cottonwood,” says Michael Pierce, director of viticulture and enology at Yavapai College and winemaker for Bodega Pierce and Saeculum Cellars. “People can come to see the scale of things.”

Enabling other young winemakers to make their mark in a competitive and expensive endeavor is another key component for Keenan.

Creating momentum for young wineries

They had wine, talent and a solid business plan. But the founders of Chateau Tumbleweed lacked pricey equipment and a space where the public could taste and purchase their wines.

They found both at the Four Eight Wineworks co-op, which Keenan launched in 2014. The co-op no longer exists, but it gave Chateau and other fledgling wineries access to the same top-notch winemaking equipment Keenan was using for Merkin. It also provided a cool tasting room housed in a historic bank in Clarkdale, another Verde Valley hub.

Chateau Tumbleweed winemaker Joe Bechard and Keenan had known each other professionally for years. When embarking on the co-op’s winemaking facility, Keenan called Bechard who then selected the equipment and broke in the facility while Keenan was growing his Merkin line. All of this served as on-the-job training in every facet of the industry from harvest to sales, says Chateau’s co-owner and Bechard’s wife Kris Pothier. The couple co-owns Chateau Tumbleweed with another couple, Kim Koistinen and Jeff Hendricks.

“(We) had been pushing on a plan and running into dead ends,” Pothier says. “What we didn't have was forward momentum… Maynard was really generous and helped facilitate getting that momentum started.”

At the co-op, Chateau made 1,500 cases of wine. They were able to move into their own winery and tasting room in Clarkdale and today it makes close to 6,000 cases per year along with wine for other area wineries.

“Joe and I learned from Maynard how to move forward in this industry,” Pothier says. “The kindness he shows to fellow winemakers is often overlooked by people’s interpretation of him being famous.”

Planting an acre sprouts a college wine program

Yavapai College in Clarkdale started offering winemaking classes in 2009. A year later, Keenan donated the first acre of what would become the two-year college’s nearly 13-acre estate vineyard.

Keenan’s father was a teacher, so he says he understood the importance of starting an education program based on local data and conditions and building a workforce with local expertise.

“People make it sound like I did the heavy lifting. I did not. I just planted a vineyard,” Keenan says. “(That way) people could see it, make decisions and go, ‘Oh that is real.’”

But the first acre was a big push.

“It kind of forced the issue,” recalls Pierce, the college's director of viticulture and enology. “That’s when people started to get excited about this.”

Pierce studied winemaking at the University of California, Davis, and Washington State University, considered the equivalents of Harvard in the wine world. He returned to his home state and took on winemaker duties at his family’s wineries Bodega Pierce and Saeculum Cellars in southern Arizona.

In 2010, Pierce met Keenan when he was in Clarkdale to assist the college with building the Southwest Wine Center,
which opened in 2014. Located in a space that once housed racquetball courts, it includes a teaching vineyard and operating winery where students get hands-on lessons while earning a two-year certificate in viticulture.

While Pierce was in Clarkdale, Keenan offered the Four Eight co-op as a home away from home for his family’s wines.

Keenan has stayed close with the college, employing students and providing information and resources to the vineyard.

“He started that idea of sharing what we’re doing,” Pierce says. “Our competition is not other Arizona wineries. It’s California, Washington and other big players that can make wine at a large margin and low price point.”

Several hundred students have graduated from the wine program with the average age being 50. Most are retired and seeking a second career or have always dreamed about entering the industry. There have been numerous mom-and-pop operations started by graduates.

“When you visit an Arizona tasting room, you’re talking to the owner-operator. And there’s always a story to be told there,” says Pierce, whose parents can be spotted pouring at Bodega Pierce’s tasting rooms in Willcox and Clarkdale. “(Keenan) is an owner-operator and even though he’s got more dollars and a bigger business, he’s still doing it and he’s able to tell that story.”

Viticulture impact leads to ‘great fruit’

Kent Callaghan started making wine at his Elgin winery in the early 1990s, when the bulk of Arizona's wine industry was in the Sonoita/Elgin designated American Viticultural Area in southern Arizona. By the early 2000s, activity expanded north into the Verde Valley and southeast into Willcox, the state’s two other designated AVAs.

Keenan’s Al Buhl Memorial Vineyard, Callaghan says, is the epicenter for that Willcox growth, with much of the credit owed to Keenan’s southern and northern vineyard managers, Jesse Noble and Chris Turner respectively.

With their expertise and willingness to share knowledge, the state’s overall viticulture has improved in quality and variety, explains Callaghan, who has exchanged ideas with Noble and Turner regarding planting and farming.

“A great winemaker only gets you so far,” Callaghan says. He is the most tenured Arizona winemaker with at least 10 more years of experience than his colleagues. “You can’t make really good wine without great fruit, and variety selection and viticulture practices are huge in bringing that about.”

When they met in the early 2000s, Callaghan didn’t know Keenan’s music. He got to know Keenan through the lens of wine, as did Pavle Milic.

When FnB co-owner Milic opened his James Beard Award-winning Old Town Scottsdale restaurant with chef and business partner Charleen Badman in 2009, Caduceus was among the first Arizona wines he added to the menu. Milic wanted to cultivate a solid Arizona wine selection to bridge the gap between the beverage menu and Badman’s local-centric dishes.

“(Keenan) makes some of the best, most well-balanced wines,” Milic says. “I can’t remember anyone saying they didn’t enjoy them.”

Milic is also the winemaker at Los Milics Vineyards, which he founded in 2014. The operation includes vineyards, a winery, tasting rooms in Old Town Scottsdale and Elgin and guest lodging.

As a newer winemaker, Milic has called Keenan for advice during challenging times. Keenan always made himself and his resources available, Milic says. Right before harvest, Keenan sent Milic and his team a survival guide of healthy sodas and junk food to get them through.

“He is the type of person that if you hint that you need something, he moves heaven and earth to help you out,” Milic says. “And the guy happens to make really good wine, and that’s making us all look good.”

A winemaker with Grammys

When Keenan’s colleagues talk about his Arizona winemaking career, “he wants to be known as a winemaker, not a musician” is a phrase that often comes up.

But Keenan’s gigs are often difficult to separate. His fellow winemakers acknowledge that his fame raises an awareness the industry hadn’t experienced before. The money earned from being an international rock star affords him all the essential tools, and then some, to excel at the craft. And to share it.

“The music and being high profile commands a lot of attention and it helps get Arizona wine much more notoriety in front of a lot more people,” says Callaghan, who is also president of the Arizona Wine Growers Association, a nonprofit that advocates for the state’s wine industry.

At FnB, some order Keenan’s wine because they equate the higher price tag with better quality. His specialization of Italian grapes tends to be a conversation starter with others. And Milic has served Keenan's wines to customers who are diehard Tool fans who just had to have it.

“That is the beauty with Arizona wine. We are able to go away from the usual conversations you have about wine. You can tell this story that is distinctively Arizona and Maynard, through his platform, has been invaluable in championing that message,” Milic says.

Keenan’s confidence in the industry makes it easy to for him to bring Arizona wine into the spotlight.

“I may have brought a little bit of rattle to the cage,” Keenan says. “But, if I’m doing rattling that’s not worth rattling, then it’s a one-off. But it’s not. It’s not a lightning strike.”

When in winemaking mode, he’s in the elements loading tons of fruit from the truck and processing it in his winery. From vineyard to bottle, he is there for every gritty and messy step, and every rewarding sip.

“Often, the idea of Maynard’s fame really covers the fact that he's a really hardworking and generous person who’s extremely ambitious,” Pothier says. “He’s like us, with Grammys.”

Humbled by Mother Nature

Keenan is over the skepticism wine snobs have regarding Arizona wines. In the early years, he says he may have preferred aggressive methods to changing their minds. Today, he’s embraced a calmer reaction by letting the product do the persuading.

“It’s exhausting trying to change people’s minds. But if you’re willing to try the wine, we’ve proven over and over again that our wines will stand on the stage along with world-class wine producers,” Keenan says.

It’s easy to get Keenan to open up about wine, food and the industry he’s become a key part of. However, it’s difficult to entice him to talk about his own accolades within Arizona wine or how he wants his legacy and contributions remembered.

Instead, he prefers to discuss how much of an anchor wineries and vineyards can be to a community, the fact that grapes are a low water crop and winemaking has the capacity to support a cooperative industry. And how it has the power to get people in conversations with the objective of helping each other, regardless of political lines.

He also seems to relish the idea of being in charge of something that is really in charge of him.

“The music business is all very selfish. The cameras are pointed at you, you're on the stage, it’s very egocentric. With winemaking, you’re getting your butt kicked by Mother Nature. There's a lot of humbling (and) humility that you have to embrace,” Keenan says. “That’s when you relax, let go and ride the wave.”