On our Jerome wine adventure we stopped in at Caduceus Cellars tasting room, one of the many wines owned by Tool singer Maynard Keenan. Maynard is a huge Arizona wine advocate and although he may be a Tool (see what I did there), he really has been beneficial in our wine region.
The winery is named Caduceus Cellars, after the staff of the Greek god Hermes. While the vineyard is named after a merkin which is a “special” type of wig. They have a tasting room in Jerome branded as Caduceus, and the Merkin Vineyards Osteria which is really fancy Italian name for a place that serves wine and simple food. Keenan also started Four Eight Wineworks, which is a coop in the form of an alternating proprietorship to help fledgling wineries get started.
The Caduceus wine tasting room is a really great space. It is a great mix of using a historic space and keeping true to its history, but with a modern, sexy flair. Since it was a Saturday they were, of course, slammed. When you walk in you see a nice bar area and several other smaller tables that run horizontal to the main bar. Unlike a lot of tasting rooms, all of their wines are stored out on the floor, under tables or in racks along the wall.
Since the bar was slammed we stepped up to one of the smaller tables, but moved as soon as the larger bar opened up. For those of us who are wine tasting room experts, you know this is the best location to actually chat with the wine servers. You will get a better description of the wines and often you may get the opportunity to try something extra.
In this case, we were able to get the cutest young lady to help us. She was so busy, but still worked with a smile and passion, took the time to tell us about each wine and gave us her personal thoughts as well. It was great. As we have mentioned in probably every post before, we don’t drink whites, really only reds. So we opted for the red flight.
We tried 3 reds all under the Caduceus label. I have to say, I really liked all three. We ended up buying a Sancha, and since the wines are foiled over the corks, we are going to let it age a bit to see how much better it gets.
The Caduceus wines are a bit more expensive than the average; all the wines on the tasting menu are at a $50 price point. But they are really, really good wines. We don’t really get up to Jerome that often as it gets pretty crowded on the weekend, but if we do come back we’ll stop back in.
If you have not already, check out yesterdays feature on Salvatore, or check out all of our Sippin' September features here.
Living, loving, drinking, and traveling through life.
— Derek
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