What is Salvatore Vineyards?
Many Old Town visitors remember Salvatore as the little tasting room across from the bronze horses on Fifth Avenue. That room now carries the family’s other name, Passion Cellars. Salvatore Vineyards pours a few blocks north, at 7103 E Stetson Dr, in a room of its own.
Salvatore is the oldest and most serious of the Domanico family’s three labels. The winery’s story begins in 2012, and in 2013 the family founded Passion Cellars at Salvatore Vineyards on Fort Grant Road in Willcox, the high plain in southeastern Arizona that grows most of the state’s wine grapes. The labels divide the work. Salvatore is the reserve line, made to age. Passion Cellars is for drinking now. Cabal Cellars, the third, is a collaboration between the two teams, and the Stetson room pours it too. Production now runs at sites in Willcox and Elgin.
The room is wood-lined and hung with colorful art, and the list leans Italian and southern European: sangiovese, aglianico and blends among the reds, malvasia bianca and viognier among the whites. The wine tasting guide calls Salvatore a smaller Willcox producer with an Italian-leaning list, quieter than the Main Street rooms, and that is still the right description.
It is the room for people who want to talk about what a wine will do in five years, not just how it tastes today.
Tasting on Stetson
Ask for the reserve story. Order a flight and ask the staff to build it around the Salvatore wines, with a Cabal Cellars pour alongside. The point of a reserve label is age, so ask which vintages are drinking now and which want time; Arizona’s seasons swing hard with the monsoon, and the answers vary more than you would expect.
Pair it with Passion Cellars. The family’s two Old Town rooms are about five minutes apart on foot. Start at Passion Cellars on Fifth Avenue for the drink-now wines, walk north on Marshall Way, and finish here. It is the best way to understand what the two labels are for.
Know the block. Stetson Drive between Marshall Way and Scottsdale Road is the Southbridge restaurant strip, quiet in the afternoon and busy after dark. Barrio Queen and Marcellino Ristorante are the nearby dinners; the Arizona Canal and the Waterfront promenade are a block away for a sunset walk. Hours run from midday into the evening, later on Thursday through Saturday.
Groups call ahead. Like most Old Town tasting rooms, Salvatore is small; more than six people should phone first. Bring home a bottle, or a bottle of the family’s olive oil or balsamic, which travel better than you might think.
Stetson Drive, after the wine bars
Stetson Drive has a long history with wine. Kazimierz, the unmarked wine cave behind Cowboy Ciao, taught Scottsdale to drink adventurously for two decades before both closed in 2018. Merkin Vineyards took over 7133 E Stetson and became Arizona wine’s loudest Old Town address until it closed in 2024. For a few years the street was where Scottsdale learned that Arizona could make wine worth paying for.
Salvatore came to Stetson by a different route. The family’s first Old Town room was on Fifth Avenue, across from Bob Parks’ bronze horses, and for years wine writers on the Scottsdale Wine Trail called that room Salvatore. As the family grew, adding Cabal Cellars, a second production site in Elgin and tasting rooms in Jerome, Tombstone, Elgin and Willcox, the Old Town presence grew to two rooms: Passion Cellars on Fifth Avenue and Salvatore here.
The location suits the label. Stetson’s restaurants, which came in the late 1990s and early 2000s, are dinner destinations, and a reserve wine room makes sense as a stop before or after one. The block also sits between the shopping streets and the canal, so it catches people walking from the galleries to the Waterfront.
The honest assessment: Salvatore is a small room from a mid-sized family producer, not a destination in itself. But it is a calmer alternative to the busy rooms on Main Street and Marshall Way, the Italian-leaning wines stand out in a scene dominated by rhone varieties, and pairing it with Passion Cellars teaches more about Arizona wine than most single stops do.