Arizona winemakers turn to AI for routine tasks

Arizona winemakers are beginning to use artificial intelligence in ways that are practical, specific and, in some cases, surprisingly ordinary, from sorting emails and writing tasting notes to tracking inventory and finding hard-to-source equipment parts.

The shift is happening as the wine industry in the state faces the same pressures as other small businesses: rising costs, labor shortages, complex record keeping and the need to move faster on marketing and operations. For some producers, AI is becoming a tool that helps them save time in the cellar and office. For others, it is still something to test cautiously.

At Los Milics, winery owner Pavle Milic said he uses Claude’s Cowork feature to gather messages from managers into one document that is easier to read. He also uses voice commands in the cellar to handle mathematical conversions on the spot. His experience reflects a broader pattern among Arizona winemakers who are trying to use AI for routine tasks rather than replace human judgment in winemaking.

Timo Geiss, owner and winemaker at Cactus Cru, said he has been using AI for about four months to streamline winery operations in Arizona. He first used an OpenAI agent and later switched to Claude to build a custom customer relationship management system. The program tracks sales, taxes, inventory and customer data in one place. For a small winery, that kind of system can reduce the time spent moving between spreadsheets and separate databases.

Todd Bostock, owner and winegrower at Dos Cabezas WineWorks, said he has used AI to help locate obscure parts for bottling-line equipment. In his case, a photo upload can help identify a needed component faster than a manual search through catalogs or supplier lists. That kind of use shows how AI is moving beyond text generation and into problem-solving for physical operations.

Other winemakers are still testing the technology. Tiffany Mencacci, winemaker at Cove Mesa, said she has only recently started using AI but expects to explore it more during the coming harvest. She said she wants to use it to help compare flavor profiles from vintage to vintage and possibly guide yeast selection based on the aromatic profile she wants in a wine.

Jason McCluskey, winemaker at Arizona Stronghold Vineyards, said he is not a heavy user of AI and described himself as old-school. Still, he said it has helped him write tasting notes when he is tired after bottling and needs another way to describe a wine without repeating the same words.

For Kent Callaghan, owner and winegrower at Callaghan Vineyards, AI is mainly useful for promotional and marketing ideas. James Callahan, owner and winegrower at Rune Wines, said he uses it as a research and compiling tool for vineyard, winery and business questions that would otherwise take significant time to solve.

The adoption of AI in Arizona wine comes as producers look for tools that can support both the business side of winemaking and the creative work that defines it. In many cases, the technology is being used not to make decisions on its own but to speed up tasks that once took hours of manual effort.