Tool singer Keenan leaves Arizona Stronghold winery

• Maynard James Keenan and Eric Glomski started Arizona Stronghold in 2007.
• The wine was sold in 38 states and boosted Arizona's wine industry.
• Keenan, the singer of Tool, will keep the southern Ariz. vineyard; Glomski keeps the Arizona Stronghold name.

Originally published May 10, 2014

Maynard James Keenan, the lead singer of Tool, has ended his association with Arizona Stronghold, leaving the state's best-selling and highest-volume winery without an asset that led to its initial popularity.

Under the deal, Keenan will take possession of Arizona Stronghold's southern Arizona vineyard, which he will rename. Eric Glomski, the other co-founder, will keep the winery in Camp Verde and rights to the Arizona Stronghold brand.

Keenan and Glomski started the venture in 2007 with the aim of pushing Arizona wine onto the national stage.

Over the next seven years, Arizona Stronghold wine would be sold in 38 states, as well as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It won honors at wine competitions and was well-reviewed. At the 2012 Arizona Republic wine competition, bottles from Arizona Stronghold were named the best red and the best white produced in the state.

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But both Glomski and Keenan said it is time to go their separate ways.

"We both agree we can probably do better as individual entities just because we keep metaphorically butting heads on approach," said Keenan, who is winemaker at his own Caduceus Cellars.

Keenan, the singer and songwriter for Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, compared the rift to creative differences between musicians in a band. "It just doesn't quite jibe," he said. "It's not tuned properly."

Keenan said he plans to rename the vineyard for Al Buhl, the Arizona wine pioneer who died in November. Buhl planted some of the vines on the property in 1990.

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Glomski, who runs his own Page Springs Cellars, said he had not been involved in day-to-day operations of the winery for more than two years, although he was still listed as a partner in Stronghold. He said he thought it had also been that long since he had spoken with Keenan.

"I don't know exactly what to tell you other than I think we had a good run," Glomski said. "I don't regret anything we did. But fundamentally, we're really different people."

Neither man would detail the valuation of the winery, the vineyard and its properties. Keenan said he was a one-third owner and the value of his buyout was reflected in his being made owner of the vineyard.

The deal is expected to be finalized early next week, said Keenan, who was in Los Angeles on Friday for concerts with Puscifer and A Perfect Circle. Paperwork regarding the vineyard ownership was filed with the Cochise County recorder in late April. Glomski said the two have been working under the new arrangement for the past four months.

Under the deal, Keenan will sell grapes from the former Arizona Stronghold vineyard to Glomski for the next five years, so fans of the label's flagship wines won't notice a transition, Glomski said.

Glomski will eventually make the Arizona Stronghold wines from the Bonita Springs vineyard, north of Willcox. That is a 160-acre plot of land that currently has 40 acres planted, he said. He also aims to lower the price of Arizona Stronghold wines and pull back on its national profile.

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Glomski said the label would concentrate on getting into more restaurants in Arizona, including mid-priced places, like Carrabba's.

He would like to see glasses of Arizona Stronghold sell for $5 to $7 a glass, rather than the $10 or $12 it fetches in restaurants now.

In 2012, Glomski said, Arizona Stronghold made about 12,000 cases of wine. A case is 12 bottles.

For his part, Keenan said his re-christened Buhl Memorial Vineyard will produce high-quality grapes for the Merkin Vineyards line of wine. Those bottles sell in the mid- to high $20s and are distributed nationally. Keenan said Merkin produces about 6,000 cases of wine in an average year.

Keenan will continue making Caduceus, which sells for $40 to $70 a bottle, using grapes grown at his northern Arizona vineyards. Keenan said he hoped Merkin would reflect the terroir, or characteristics, of southern Arizona, and Caduceus the north.

The 80-acre Buhl vineyard will produce enough grapes for him to be able to sell to other area winemakers, Keenan said. "I'll have more fruit to sell — properly farmed, consistent fruit — for Arizona winemakers to have access to," he said.

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In October, Keenan started a wine cooperative, Four Eight Wineworks. It has a tasting room in a former bank building in downtown Clarkdale, a community between Cottonwood and Jerome. It has a winery in a warehouse building in Camp Verde. The facilities, Keenan said, are intended to be shared with winemakers who are just starting out and can't afford equipment and real estate on their own.

His first co-operative members are Chateau Tumbleweed and Iniquus Cellars. Both wines are made by former Glomski employees. Iniquus is made by Tim White, the former award-winning winemaker for Arizona Stronghold. Chateau Tumbleweed is made by Joe Bechard, who was a winemaker at Page Springs Cellars.

While Glomski said there are business reasons behind the split, the souring relationship between the two men contributed to it. "There are philosophical roots, practical roots, and there's personal roots," Glomski said. "He and I are definitely done working together."

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Glomski and Keenan met in 2000. Keenan had moved from Los Angeles to the Jerome area and thought it resembled wine-growing regions he had seen while touring Europe and South America. He visited Echo Canyon winery, one of the few operating in the Verde Valley. Glomski, who had worked at a California winery and studied ecology along the Verde River, was the winemaker at Echo Canyon.

Keenan absorbed the wine business at Echo Canyon. When started his own label, Caduceus, he hired Glomski to be his winemaking consultant. Glomski and Keenan made Caduceus wine at Page Springs Cellars, the winery Glomski opened in Cornville.

In a 2007 interview with The Republic, Keenan said the two had become fast friends. "It was an energy thing," Keenan said of Glomski at the time. "We see life from a similar perspective as far as how we think about art and business."

That year, the two purchased the Dos Cabezas vineyard south of Willcox and dubbed it the Arizona Stronghold vineyard.

The property would grow enough grapes to produce red and white blends that could be sold nationally at a relatively low price. The first white wine, Tazi, was released in 2008. At the time, Glomski said the aim was to price the bottles at around $20.

The pair went on a nationwide tour, hitting wine shops and grocery stores. Fans of Keenan's music lined up to meet the reclusive hard-rock star and get his autograph. His policy was that he would only sign wine bottles, not Tool CDs or ticket stubs. The pair also attended screenings to promote the documentary "Blood Into Wine," made about the venture.

Glomski said he felt relieved to be off that circuit. "I think it was good for me to go back to being a normal guy with a wife and kids, farming grapes (at a vineyard) and not running all around the country being a wine-making rock star," Glomski said.

Keenan said the tour was one of the first times his fans could meet him and the events had "weirdos showing up in droves."

Kennan said he could feel the relationship change during the tour and the filming of the movie. It resulted in head-butting between himself and Glomski — as well as the latter's father, Terrence Glomski, the third partner in the winery.

"I don't think (the Glomskis) accepted my process because it wasn't what they were used to seeing," Keenan said. "I think they assumed that I wasn't involved in my own success, that it was accidental in some ways. That might have been part of the initial differences."

Glomski said he felt Keenan was used to making all creative and business decisions, not bowing to anyone else. "My life was extremely busy," Glomski said, "and I didn't want to be in a situation where, in addition to working ungodly amounts of hours, I was not agreeing with one of my business partners."

Glomski will celebrate the 10th anniversary of Page Springs Cellars on June21 with a festival in downtown Cottonwood, but Keenan will not join the festivities. Glomski invited all the northern Arizona wineries to take part in the Tilted Earth festival. One notable decline came from Keenan's Caduceus Cellars and Four Eight Wineworks.

The two men will still see each other occasionally. The Four Eight Wineworks winery is in Camp Verde, just off Highway 260 and just down the road from the Arizona Stronghold winery. The proximity, Keenan said, was "awkward."

One of his employees said the wineries are close enough that someone could throw a rock from Four Eight and hit Glomski's Arizona Stronghold winery. In a deadpan voice, Keenan said, "Please do."

Richard Ruelas has written about Arizona's wine industry for the past decade. He has written profiles of winemakers, including both Glomski and Keenan. Since 2010, he has coordinated the annual Arizona Republic Wine Competition, where a panel of judges chooses the state's best wines.

How to reach him: richard.ruelas@arizonarepublic.com. 602-444-8473 Twitter:@ruelaswritings