Years in the making, this rock star's winery is a new 'focal point' in Arizona wine country

For years, before Cottonwood became a destination for wine fans, the plot of land sat abandoned. It was as if no one had use for a parcel on a hill with soaring views of the Verde Valley.

When Maynard James Keenan saw it, he knew it was the perfect spot to showcase not only his wines, but that also could, quite literally, elevate the state’s wine industry as a whole.

Keenan has planted an eye-catching vineyard on the steep hillside. Two wineries on the site, one partly open-air and the other with large windows, will let spectators spy a hint of the winemaking process. And he has built a trattoria offering pastas and pizzas designed to pair with his wines, meant to be enjoyed on the expansive patio that offers sweeping views over Old Town Cottonwood and the Verde Valley.

“That’s where I stood...and said, ‘this is the view,'” Keenan said pointing to the patio during a late September tour of the facility, days before Merkin Vineyards Hilltop Winery & Trattoria's scheduled opening.

To get to the restaurant, visitors can take a staircase. Or ride the motorized tram up the 50 feet to the top.

Keenan started planning to build on the land nearly eight years ago. In 2016, as he showed a Republic photographer and reporter the tasting room, Merkin Osteria, on Main Street in Old Town Cottonwood he was opening, he walked them up the hill to show off the vacated building where he eventually planned to build a winery.

That plan has come to fruition. Keenan expects the completed Merkin Vineyards facility to serve as gateway for the Arizona wine industry, spilling customers out onto Main Street to try the other tasting rooms that “don’t have the budget to build something insane like this.”

Keenan, who is the singer for the bands, Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, has a flair for the theatrical. And the largely open-air facility was designed to attract the eye.

“The attention is the initial foot in the door, but recognition is the goal,” Keenan said. Once someone has wandered into his funhouse, Keenan expects to seriously hook them with his wine. "Recognition has legs," Keenan said. "That has longevity, the staying power.”

How to visit: Everything to know before you go to Maynard James Keenan's new Arizona winery and trattoria

A town revitalized by innovative winemakers

This Merkin Vineyards project converted a property that had previously been used by the Cottonwood chapter of the Freemasons. That group intentionally designed its building to be insular. Keenan, with a $1.9 million loan taken out by a company he controls, has transformed it into an open-air showpiece.

The Masonic lodge closed in 2005, consolidating with the Sedona chapter amid declining membership. The building and parcel of land would sit vacant.

At the time, Old Town Cottonwood was known for its rock shops and antique stores. There wasn’t much at night, other than a thriving methamphetamine trade that centered around a run-down motel on Main Street.

In 2010, Cottonwood started courting area wineries to open tasting rooms in the area. That effort, coupled with a methamphetamine crackdown, revived the street. It's now dotted with restaurants, shops and nightlife. The former drug den on the north end of Main Street converted to a boutique hotel called the Iron Horse Inn.

Some businesses started looking at the site on top of Verde Heights Road, seeing if they could make a project feasible, said G. Krishan Ginige, president of Southwestern Environmental Consultants, who was hired for initial consultations. All the businesses that looked at the land were related to wine, Ginige said, and none pursued it very far.

Part of the reason was the unique topography. “It’s a huge site with a very small footprint on top,” Ginige said during a phone interview.

Making the site work economically would mean figuring out what to do with the land on the hillside, Ginige said.

Keenan was the only one who came to Ginige with the idea of planting a vineyard there, he said. And that presented its own challenges.

Ginige said his company spent about two months trying to figure out how to create a vineyard on the steep hillside that would be both practical, economical and stable. He studied other hillside vineyards, including some in Italy, but couldn’t find an exact parallel. “It’s not something you see in any other place,” he said.

One hillside vineyard was Keenan’s own Judith’s Block in Jerome, also along a steep grade. That Keenan already had a similar vineyard planted let him know it could be done and made him somewhat exasperated that the new project was taking so long to engineer.

Keenan also knew he was setting himself up with another vineyard, like Judith’s Block, that couldn’t be harvested using machines.

“It’s so hard to farm. Hand-picked, hand-sorted, hand pruned,” he said. “All those fun words.”

Keenan also wanted to build two wineries on the land on top of the hill, one for his Merkin Vineyards line and another for his higher-end Caduceus Cellars. With so little usable land on top of the hill, Ginige said, the answer came from digging the building 10 feet into the hillside and holding them up with concrete pillars set deep into the mountainside.

Doing so keeps the wineries well insulated. Keenan said it is a hedge to protect the wine in the fermenting tanks and barrel room in case of a long-term power failure.

The building that held the Masonic Lodge became the restaurant, said Reynold Radoccia of Architecture Works Green, the architect on the project. Though it had to be reconfigured. The Masons built it in 1952 with few windows, Radoccia said.

“The Masons weren’t necessarily interested in the great views of the Verde Valley,” he said. “They required more privacy in their building.”

Radoccia said he tried to honor the construction style in the new building, attempting to mimic the style to honor the history.

Then there was the tram, a conveyance on fixed track similar to what was built to transport miners in another era of the Verde Valley.

Keenan thought of a tram early on in the project. He did not want his winery to tower above Main Street. Instead, he wanted to be a part of it. So, he envisioned a tram that would take visitors from Main Street up the hill, giving the winery something of an amusement park vibe.

Cottonwood Mayor Tim Elinski said adding that tram has expanded the footprint of Old Town Cottonwood. "Before, I didn't think about (that site) being in Old Town," he said. "But, now it's a focal point. He's done a great job of punctuating it."

The project attracted no words of protest as it went through the required zoning hearings, , a measure of the city’s support.

“Really, the entire community has wrapped its arms around the wine industry,” Elinski said.

The Merkin Winery will replace the previous one housed in an anonymous industrial building off Old Highway 279, south of the city. The Caduceus Cellars winery will add capacity to the previous "bunker" Keenan had built alongside his home near Jerome.

The restaurant will replace the Merkin Osteria that had been on Main Street. That building will be converted to a fried chicken restaurant that will pour wine from another Keenan project, Four Eight WineWorks.

A winery for connoisseurs and casual drinkers alike

Keenan said he thought the facility would appeal to people with disparate types of wine knowledge.

The casual tourists, including the ones who might not believe Arizona can grow wine grapes, will be able to see proof with a thriving vineyard on the hillside, Keenan said.

Wine aficionados, from the hilltop view, will recognize the similarities between this area and other wine regions around the country and world. It’s a similarity Keenan himself recognized when he first moved to northern Arizona.

And for those with the means and desire, Keenan will offer a $199-a-person food and wine tasting experience in an exclusive room where he hopes aficionados will note the unique characteristics of the state’s wines. The Ventura Room experience will offer the only opportunity for guests to tour the winery and taste and buy Caduceus Cellars wines with the grapes grown on the hillside vineyard.

Grapes for other Caduceus and Merkin wines come from vineyards in the Verde Valley and Willcox.

Although the price might be high by Cottonwood standards, Keenan said the omakase-style tasting experience can stand alongside tourist offerings in Sedona. And he’s not worried about shooting too high.

“Every time someone’s tried to raise the bar, it’s worked,” Keenan said.

Everything in service to the wine

On a late September afternoon, Keenan walked through his trattoria as staff were being trained. His pizza chef, an 18-year-old named Kai Miller brought out pies with blistered crusts from the wood-fired oven. Keenan looked at a margarita pizza and mocked exasperation. “What is this?” he yelled, channeling his inner Gordan Ramsey, the chef from television’s “Kitchen Nightmares.” Miller showed no reaction as he strolled back into the kitchen.

Miller, a former state wrestling champion, came to Keenan’s attention through a clinic for the team Keenan held at his Brazilian jiu-jitsu studio. Instead of ending up a trainer, Miller said he had a passion for pizza and was hired.

The menu at the trattoria mirrors the one at the former Merkin Osteria on Main Street. Vegetables and herbs will largely come from a farm Keenan has at a property near Jerome and a greenhouse on the hilltop Merkin Vineyards site.

As Keenan settled in a booth and ate and praised the pizza, one of his restaurant managers brought something new out from the kitchen — calamari, lightly breaded and fried.

Keenan said he liked the dish, but said that it didn’t fit the overall mission of the restaurant. Not unless the calamari came directly from the Verde River. “It’s not really what we do here,” he said.

Keenan said he’s not aiming to merely create an Italian restaurant, but a place that celebrates what can be grown in Arizona. And one that compliments the Arizona wine that will be served alongside it.

For Keenan, this project was intended to be a winery, first and foremost. Everything else — the food, the gelato stand, the tram, the view — is in service to the wine.

“We do wine,” Kennan said. Everything else “is literally there to support what we all know is the cornerstone of what we’re doing in Arizona, which is wine.”

Details: Merkin Vineyards Hilltop Winery & Trattoria, 770 N. Verde Heights Drive, Cottonwood. 928-639-1001, merkinvineyards.org.

Reach Ruelas at 602-444-8473 or at richard.ruelas@arizonarepublic.com. Follow the reporter at @ruelaswritings on X, formerly known as Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Merkin Vineyards Hilltop Winery & Trattoria is new Arizona destination