at Yavapai College and launched its wine program. At Yavapai College, graduates earn a two-year viticulture certificate on a campus that features a teaching vineyard and an onsite winery. In 2014, the college opened the Southwest Wine Center, where students learn how to operate in a tasting room environment, doing sales and customer service while pouring wines they made. In recent years, students have churned out award-winning wines that garnered accolades from prestigious local and national competitions. While leading the program, Pierce saw more than 100 graduates earn degrees, with about 25 entering winemaking careers. Omphalos Winery, 1764 Vineyards and Vino Stache Winery are among those helmed by graduates making a splash. Vino Stache owner and winemaker Brooke Lowry Ide enrolled at Yavapai College when she was 32. She launched her winery in 2019, and opened her tasting room in Elgin last year. Ide’s wines can be found in Phoenix restaurants and wine shops today. Ide, 44, says she feels a responsibility to uphold what her predecessors created. “The Kent Callaghans and Sam Pillsburys of our industry, they are my mentors and peers and I want to help continue what they built, which is the legacy that is Arizona wine,” Ide says. “I hope we can pick up the slack and make them proud.” Pounding the pavement After that fateful glass of Dos Cabezas WineWorks white 26 years ago, Pillsbury embraced Arizona wine like few people before or since. He spent the next several years working with Buhl and studying the art of tending vineyards and making wine. In 2006, he started the wine company that bears his name, bought land across the road from Buhl’s and planted his new vines in 2007. At the time, most didn’t believe that wine was produced in a state known for dusty deserts and cactus. The words “Arizona wine” were met with mockery or disdain. Pillsbury pushed his label by pounding the pavement. Today, he is among the few local winemakers with first-hand stories, some as recent as 2015, about how brutally difficult promoting Arizona wine was. He recalls a restaurateur who touted supporting local wares but walked away wordlessly when Pillsbury tried to offer him a taste. At a festival where Pillsbury was pouring, a passerby said he’d tasted an Arizona wine 10 years earlier, and it was so awful that he swore never to try another. Even the early wins were fraught. Pillsbury says his was the first Arizona wine to make it into Costco, where he sold bottles but was not allowed to pour it, for insurance reasons. Pillsbury would set his wines on a table, place positive reviews in plastic sleeves on stands and step away. When curious customers approached the table, he’d engage them in conversation. “If you think it’s hard to sell Arizona wines when people can taste?” he asks. “Try doing it when you can’t.” Yet the public came around. One stub- born drinker told Pillsbury he drank only beer. Years later, he saw Pillsbury at a tasting and reminded him how Pillsbury “had a go at him” in response to his comment. The man had since become a wine fan. “He said, ‘You have changed my life,’” Pillsbury recalls. “Sometimes it works.” An extrovert with a knack for chatting up strangers and an affinity for cursing, Pillsbury’s ability to draw laughter — and occasional disapproval — propelled him to become one of the industry’s most recog- nizable faces and personalities. Some tell Pillsbury that his accent helps him pull off the occasional F-bomb in mixed company. It’s been a natural ice breaker in an environment perceived to be stuffy. Pillsbury was pouring at an event when a group of women walked in looking uncomfortable, like they didn’t belong. He waved them over and delivered this opening line: “Hi, ladies. Would you like to try some wine? Because I’ve got some really fucking good wine here.” “All of a sudden, their bodies relaxed because they weren’t with an elitist snob,” Pillsbury says. “I was a person like them.” While Pillsbury remains down-to- earth, his bottles have landed in high places. He submitted his wares to the pres- tigious San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, where highly respected critics granted validation in the form of multiple awards. Initially, Pillsbury began submitting his wines in an effort to gain respect from the industry’s top dogs – the strategy he employed as a New Zealand filmmaker. Over the years, Pillsbury’s wines have continued to earn accolades from the Chronicle and other competitions. Pillsbury talks about a newer wine- maker who was fascinated by his stories of back in the day. “He had no actual experience of trying to sell wine to an audience that thought he was a fucking idiot,” he says. “I don’t think most of the people whose first vintages are post-2018 have a really good understanding of what an incredibly hostile market we faced.” Perception wasn’t the only challenge While the commercial climate of Arizona wine has improved, the actual climate hasn’t. The heat stretches for eternities. The thunderstorms would make Napa duck and cover. It hails. High winds sweep through vineyards. The altitude is breath- taking. It monsoons. Pillsbury recalls harvesting grapes at 3 a.m. to dodge the heat and driving his tractor in triple-digit temperatures. Last summer, Pillsbury fainted while working in the vines with a colleague. The heat and altitude will strike down even a seasoned pro. “All of us are very brave and innovative,” he says. “We’re blazing a new trail every time we plant a new variety.” Once the wine is made, a winemaker needs customers. This also, is becoming trickier. A younger generation of winemakers needs a younger generation of wine drinkers. The Baby Boomers and Generation Xers who have grown up with American wines are slowly being replaced by drinkers who prefer a cocktail, a hard seltzer – or a legal joint. Gen Z members of legal drinking age spend just 15% of what Baby Boomers spend on wine, says Corey Turnbull, the owner and winemaker at Rubrix Wines, in Cottonwood. He also raises the connection to marijuana legalization: a study in the Journal of Cannabis Research found that states see a slump in wine sales of 8 to 10% once they legalize weed. At 45, Turnbull is a young veteran of the Arizona wine industry. He got his start in 2006, and started making wine in 2007. In 2021, Turnbull started Rubrix and opened his tasting room on the main drag in Old Town Cottonwood. Turnbull takes a mini- malist approach that allows the Arizona grapes to show off their natural character, a strategy that has earned his label several awards for wines such as his 2023 Saguaro, a grenache noir. Turnbull is also the head winemaker at Page Springs Cellars, which in April hosted a tasting event in Downtown Phoenix geared to Millennials and Gen Z drinkers. The email containing the invitation politely asked older wine drinkers to pass the notice on to their kids or grandkids of legal drinking age. For Page Springs, Turnbull has been making low-ABV wines, another move to appeal to the age group and introduce them to wine. The founder, Turnbull says, “is trying to approach the younger genera- tion with something outside of White Claw.” Money is an obstacle In times when buying a bottle of wine becomes an economic conundrum, opening a winery or vineyard isn’t a feasible option for most. Pillsbury made his wine at Many of the prized bottles from Pillsbury Wine Co. begin at the company’s vineyard and winery in Willcox. (David Del Grande) A Distinguished Vintage from p 11 >> p 14
