Days of wine and coping
Wineries move to bottle sales only, so plan accordingly
Hoping to break the monotony by visiting a tasting room? Be advised wineries have halted tastings and are limited to bottle sales. Confirmed cases of coronavirus in the three counties where Arizona’s tasting rooms are located triggered the restrictions.
Note to readers: Although the federal government and the government of Arizona have issued no mandatory stay-at-home orders, we understand that many people are practicing social distancing and self-quarantine in reaction to the new coronavirus pandemic. This article is intended to acknowledge readers’ interest in activities they may be able to do while reducing contact with people outside of their households. Go to cdc.gov/coronavirus for guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Consider the effect your travels could have on others.
After days of working from home during the coronavirus outbreak, a trip to an Arizona winery might prove a tempting weekend getaway for people in metro Phoenix.
But if you are thinking of taking a drive, know that wineries can no longer offer tastings. They are restricted to bottle sales only as diagnoses of the novel coronavirus have spread across the state.
Confirmed cases in each of the three counties where the
state’s tasting rooms are located triggered provisions in Gov. Doug Ducey’s executive order that closed bars. He issued that order on March 19.
Some wineries have closed entirely; others remain open for sales while minimizing contact. That the wineries’ reactions to the COVID-19 crisis are all over the map is partly a result of the wineries’ diverse locations around Arizona.
In some places, like Willcox in southeast Arizona, practicing social distancing would seemingly never be a problem. Other areas, like the Verde Valley or the Phoenix area, get packed on weekends.
Until the spread of the virus took the decision out of their hands, the state’s winemakers had to wrestle with whether to stay open for bottle sales, change their operations dramatically or shutter entirely.
What some southern Arizona wineries are doing
In the Arizona wine world, Sonoita is different from Scottsdale. And things are different in Cornville from Cottonwood. And even within regions and towns, winemakers’ opinions differed.
Last week, while some of his neighboring tasting rooms on Elgin Road in Elgin were closing or halting bottle sales, Mark Beres said he planned to operate his winery and distillery, Flying Leap, as normal.
Beres, on his Facebook page, suggested that the economic shutdown was an overreaction to the coronavirus.
Beres said that his tasting room in Elgin, as well as his locations in Tubac and Bisbee, average well below 20 visitors an hour, he said.
“If we all take care of each other,” Beres said, “we’ll get through this.”
Other winemakers made different calculations and felt the pull between the risks of staying open in highly populated areas versus the sparse populations out by the vineyards.
Robert Carlson, co-owner of Carlson Creek Vineyards, was at his Willcox vineyard last week on what he described as a gorgeous afternoon. His nearest neighbor, he said, was well beyond the recommended federal guidelines of six feet. “About a mile away, I see a truck,” he said.
Still, he planned to halt tastings at his winery’s three rooms in Scottsdale, Cottonwood and Willcox as of 8 p.m. Thursday.
Buying Arizona wine
All tasting rooms are offering bottle sales only, following Gov. Doug Ducey’s executive order closing bars. Call your favorite winery or check its website and social media pages to find out if it is open.
Each would be open only for bottle sales.
Carlson said the decision was made in consultation with tasting room employees. In the end, he said, he thought it important that the winery treat all the tasting rooms the same.
He also didn’t want to encourage travelers to make the trek to his room, fearing it might put their health in jeopardy.
“Most of our traffic (in Willcox) comes from outside the rural area,” Carlson said. “We have people traveling from the city, down here, and then back.”
What’s happening in the Verde Valley
Maynard James Keenan, owner of Caduceus Cellars in Jerome, said he was looking outside and monitoring the activities of a bird and a squirrel on a peaceful Thursday last week. “There doesn’t seem to be a huge pandemic going on outside the window,” he said.
Still, he was closing his tasting rooms in Scottsdale, Jerome and Cottonwood entirely, until at least March 30. A pizza truck would offer food outside the Merkin Vineyards tasting room in Old Town Cottonwood.
“From a business perspective, as long as you have people coming in, you stay open,” Keenan said. “But I feel responsible for that action.”
Kennan originally planned to stay open for bottle sales only. But, after a weekend of that experiment, he decided to go further and shutter the public areas of his business completely. In a text, he said he felt the need to protect his own family and his family of employees.
Both Carlson and Keenan said they would work to help any employees who lose their jobs during this time. Keenan said he would give them vegetables grown at the garden that supplies his restaurant, as well as dried pasta made in-house at the Cottonwood location.
Keenan’s Jerome and Cottonwood tasting rooms typically draw large crowds on the weekends. That is in part due to Keenan’s other job as frontman for the bands Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer.
Tool just finished a tour of Australia and New Zealand, including a show in which New Zealand officials said one fan attended who was later diagnosed with the virus. Tool decided to suspend its North American tour that was supposed to start in mid-April.
If his tasting rooms did not routinely draw a lot of people, he said, Keenan could envision the appeal of staying open. And the appeal for people to visit.
“Just a break,’ he said, “Give the brain a break.”
He said he was partly flying blind in his decision making.
“We’re just trying to do the right things without overreacting or underreacting,” he said. “It’s a balance. We’re just guessing at this point.”