Willcox winery calls it quits, liquidating inventory

No reason was given for the closure in the announcement sent Thursday from owners Rob Hammelman and Sarah Fox.

“We now find ourselves at the end of this journey,” was all they said in the statement, which thanked customers for “the opportunity to be on your tables to share our love of Cochise County with you.”

Neither Hammelman or Fox could be reached Friday for additional comment.

Sand-Reckoner’s closing comes after several years of business ups and downs including a planned move into the basement of the short-lived boutique Citizen Hotel at 82 S. Stone Ave. that never fully materialized. In August, the winery closed its seven-year-old downtown tasting room at 510 N. Seventh Ave. At the time, the winery announced it was moving to online sales in the fall.

Wineries statewide are in a slump as they find themselves with excess inventory and not enough buyers. Following an industry boom during the pandemic, most wineries upped production to meet expectations that the pandemic demand would continue. But post-pandemic changes in consumer habits including a drop in wine consumption and increased popularity of hard seltzers like White Claw left many wineries with too much wine and not enough buyers.

During the fall harvest season, some of Arizona’s biggest wineries including in Willcox and Sonoita/Elgin said they planned to make little to no new wine this year. Some also said they planned to leave the fruit to die on the vine because they couldn’t find buyers for their excess fruit.

Hammelman and Fox launched the small-batch Sand-Reckoner in 2010 on 12 acres on the Willcox Bench, a high desert area bookended by the Chiricahua and Dragoon mountains. Seven years in, they opened their first tasting room in Tucson’s Historic Warehouse District.

The winery is liquidating its inventory from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday at 810 E. 17th St. Bottles will be marked down at least 50%, with deeper discounts for cases.