THE GRAPE CONSPIRACY -- Tool's Maynard James Keenan to sign bottles of his wine tonight at La Jolla Whole Foods

These are the kind of words you might expect to hear Maynard James Keenan use when discussing the heady music he makes as the lead singer, lyricist and frontman with such boundary-pushing rock bands as Tool and A Perfect Circle.

But a recent interview found him using these words to describe one of his other passions: the wines he makes at his two wineries, Caduceus Cellars and Merkin Vineyards.

"You can grow grapes in almost any part of the world. You just have to develop your palette enough to realize wine is an expression of the place where you make it," Keenan, 44, said from his northwestern Arizona home, which overlooks one of his two vineyards. "You don't have to take over the world; just be an artist and express your area."

Of course, a typical rock star might be more comfortable lending his name to a product more, well, rock star-like, such as beer, whiskey, or a clothing line made out of hemp.

But Keenan, who spent three years in the U.S. Army before turning down an appointment to West Point in 1984, isn't a typical rock star.

He generally shuns the spotlight, rarely does interviews and usually performs on a darkened stage or in silhouette behind a scrim. As a result, most fans probably wouldn't recognize him on the street -- or sitting at a table at the La Jolla Whole Foods store, siging bottles of wine, as he will do today from 5 to 9 p.m. with Eric Glomski, his Arizona Stronghold Vineyards partner. (You must be 21 or older to attend.)

Keenan also doesn't worry about his image, as befits an art-rock maverick who cites not only Black Sabbath, but also Roberta Flack and the Jackson 5, as early musical influences. As for the aesthetic appeal wine-making holds for him, it's all in the soil and on the vines.

"There's so much more going on in a grape," Keenan said. "Structurally, it's a much more complex entity -- as opposed to wheat or hops (in beer) -- and I respond to it more. My response also has more to do with the ' `sustain-ability' that comes along with a wine community, which is kind of what drew me to it...

"With everything going on in the world now, you look around and see that little communities tend to be unaffected by stock changes and regime changes. Vineyard communities tend to be relatively bulletproof and seem more community- and family-based. They provide economic stability for their area."

An Ohio native, Keenan moved to the Arizona town of Cornville in 1995, four years after Tool was formed in Los Angeles. He put in his first vineyard in 2000 and debuted his first wines in 2004.

His first exposure to wine came when he was in his mid-20s and was visiting a former high school pal who worked at an Italian wine shop in Boston.

"There was a consciousness that resonated from those bottles," Keenan said. "It was a whole other language that I don't think I was ready to learn at that time."

But his first wine epiphany took place in 1995, after fellow musician Tori Amos gave him a bottle of wine. It changed his life.

"I was into wine, but something about that particular gift really opened up a whole new understanding of the interaction of a Cabernet and wood," he said. "It was a bottle of '92 Napa Valley Cabernet. Of course, my palette has grown up since then; I've discovered other things."

Keenan's discovery that he wanted to make wine took place in 1999, literally in his own back yard. backyard. While sitting on his porch with a glass of Chateauneuf du Pape, the most famous red wine from France's Cotes du Rhone region, he gazed at nearby Mingus Mountain.

"I realized this area looks like Spain or Italy," Keenan recalled.

"The limestone in this area has been pushed up by plate activity and sprinkled with volcanic dust and rocks. And this valley is near a mining town, Jerome, which has one of the oldest exposed rocks in the United States. So you have some serious history here."

Keenan, who takes his wine-making very seriously, is understandably proud that two of the wines produced by his Caduceus Cellars, Nagual del Sensei and Nagual de la Naga, received scores of 90 ("outstanding") and 88 ("very good"), respectively, from Wine Spectator magazine in 2005.

"What we're doing here in northwestern Arizona is a long-term investment to make this a viable wine region," he said. "I think my band mates are enjoying this quite a bit. If they get a little worked up, I pour them a glass and they shut up!"

Mick Fleetwood, Carlos Santana and Barry Manilow have all marketed wines that bear their names or likenesses.

But none of them appears to have the hands-on involvement Keenan does. And if he can introduce some Tool fans to fine wine, so much the better.

"Pardon me for tooting my own horn or misinterpreting my role in the music industry," Keenan said. "But in trying to decipher what this is all about and why people show up at our concerts and consider us different than other bands, it seems to me Tool is a multidimensional band. In keeping with that theme, if there's more going on than meets the eye with our band, to me that is exactly what's happening with the wine I make.

"While there may be some resistance, or people thinking of it as being a marketing plan or a get-rich scheme, it's my attempt to say: ' `OK, now that we've hopefully educated you that there can be more to music that just tapping your foot, there's also more to us as individuals and more to you than just being an audience. So, here's a whole other ocean of experience for you to discover.'

"The wine, in fact, has less to do with the egos that drive rock bands. Therefore, it could be a lot healthier for you. Other than idol worship, you can experience a more lofty level of being."