Uncorked

By Angie Johnson-Schmit

A Conversation with Arizona Winemaker Sam Pillsbury.

Sam Pillsbury is a man on a mission. The former filmmaker turned winemaker has spent the last two decades pursuing his dream of making truly excellent wine in Arizona. His efforts are paying off.

The Pillsbury Wine Company has produced award winning wines, garnering multiple gold and double gold medals over the last four years from the San Francisco Chronicle American Wine Competition, the largest competition of North American wines in the country.

Pillsbury spent several years thinking about making his own wine before he found what he was looking for. During a trip to a supermarket in Phoenix, he saw a display of three Arizona wines. He bought all three to take home. The first one he drank, a bottle of Dos Cabezas Chardonnay, “was beyond compare of any Chardonnay I’d ever drunk in 25 years, and I had drunk a lot of Chardonnay,” said Pillsbury.

He wasted no time contacting Al Buhl, the owner of Dos Cabezas, and almost immediately went into a partnership with him. The two owned and ran Dos Cabezas from 2000 to 2006 before Pillsbury decided to strike out on his own. After selling his 40 acres to Arizona Stronghold, Pillsbury bought a hundred acres across the road and planted 14,000 vines. “I figured if I could figure out how to make a feature film, I could figure out how to grow grapes and make wine,” he said.

Photocredit: Blushing Cactus Photography unless otherwise noted

Pillsbury’s desire to make his own wine had been with him since childhood. His family moved from the United States to New Zealand when he was 13, traveling by way of an Italian ocean liner. Pillsbury remembers that a bottle of Chianti was on the table every night during the trip. His parents allowed him to have a glass during dinner and he marks this as the beginning of his interest in wine.

In the 1980s, he decided to try his hand at winemaking in New Zealand and bought some land in Waiheke Island. The timing wasn’t quite right, as his career in filmmaking was taking off. He sold the land and moved to Los Angeles. “It took me quite a long time to get through that mess to the point where I could actually consider doing this thing again,” said Pillsbury.

The desire to become a winemaker was ever-present, though. During trips to the Cannes Film Festival in the South of France, the filmmaker would often seek out a quiet place to escape the madness of the festival crowds. He saw a sign advertising Chateauneuf-du-Pape and went inside to check it out. “They poured me this glass and I could already feel goosebumps coming up on my skin,” recalled Pillsbury. “I went outside, looking over the vines and I took the sip. It was an epiphanal moment.”

During his initial phone call with Al Buhl of Dos Cabezas, he had no problem answering the question of what he wanted to do. “I want to make an Arizona Chateauneuf-du-Pape,” said Pillsbury. “There was this stunned silence and he said ‘that’s what I want to do.’ So that’s what we planned and that’s what we did.” Pillsbury’s Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Diva, has gone on to win medals at top wine competitions, including a silver at the 2020 San Francisco Chronicle American Wine Competition.

Pillsbury has always followed what he likes and makes no bones about it. He points to fellow Arizona winemaker Eric Glomsky’s slogan, “Trust your palate,” as similar to his own approach to winemaking. With only one exception, Pillsbury has made the kinds of wine he likes and wants to drink. He acknowledges that he’s “not an idiot” and that if what he likes didn’t sell, he would rethink his plan. But, other than that one exception, “we’ve sold everything we’ve ever made.”

Fiercely independent, he genuinely enjoys the adventure of discovering how best to make the wines he wants to drink. “My motto is don’t be afraid to try anything,” said Pillsbury. “Almost every disaster that we’ve ever stumbled on or created, we’ve turned into award-winning wine by tweaking it in some bizarre way.”

A case in point is when he found himself with four barrels of wine that simply did not work. “Every time we took wine from any one of those barrels and tried it in the blends, it made it worse,” said Pillsbury. At the end of a very long day, he was at a loss about what to do. Finally, he decided to try blending them all together. “Gold medal, Arizona Republic Wine Festival, gold medal, San Francisco Chronicle, the biggest, toughest wine competition in the country,” he said. “Go figure.”

When reflecting on what he has learned over the past 21 years, Pillsbury counts terroir, bringing in perfect fruit and custom crush (blending) as the secrets to his success. Terroir includes -Zara Gliddeneverything from soil to climate and the literal lay of the land, and is considered a primary factor in the overall character and flavor of a particular wine. “Where you plant your vines is the most important thing you can do,” he said. He believes that his vineyard is in “probably one of the best places in the United States of America to grow wine grapes.”

Bringing in “perfect fruit” is another thing he takes very seriously. Once again, Pillsbury relied on what he believed was the right thing to do and has made a practice of checking his fruit several times a day. “If you bring in perfect fruit, you don’t have to add SO2 (sulfur dioxide) or oak chips.” For a winemaker who only makes wine from his hand harvested, hand pruned, and hand sorted organically grown grapes, it only makes sense to aim for perfection.

Before building his own winery in 2014, Pillsbury did custom crush, which means his wine was made in another winery. He credits a lot of his knowledge of blending from his custom crush years, but is quite happy using his own winery facility these days. He firmly believes there is “too much generic food and wine in the world,” and that is something he seeks to avoid. “I just wanted to make something that honored time and place and a human being,” said Pillsbury.

The higher altitude, a climate of hot, sunny days and cool nights, and water acidity require some adjustments. Because the grapes are exposed to a lot of UV light as a result of the altitude and climate, they grow thicker skins. “Do you know where the aroma and color and taste of wine mostly comes from?” asked Pillsbury. “It comes from the skins.”

What makes Arizona wines so special is, simply put, the combination of altitude and environment. There are very few vintages in the world grown at high altitudes. Pillsbury points to the Northern Italian Alto Adige whites as an example of high quality, high altitude wines. They have this “wonderful minerality, they’re crisp and clean, and just some of the best white wines in the world,” he said. Those “high altitude” vineyards are at an elevation of about 2,200 feet above sea level, or about half the altitude of the Willcox vineyards.

While there is an awful lot of Pillsbury in his wines, he absolutely listens to input from his staff. He credits his filmmaking experience with this horizontal hierarchical approach. “You can still share your vision and encourage people to try things out,” said Pillsbury. “And when everybody knows what you’re going for, not only are you inspiring everybody, but you get great ideas.”

As Arizona wines in general are growing in popularity, the industry is maturing and producing better wines than ever before. 11 years after opening a tasting room in Cottonwood, AZ he has seen the area become a wine tourism magnet. In addition to Pillsbury Wine, there are five other tasting rooms in Cottonwood, seven in the Jerome and Clarkdale area, and seven near Page Springs. Wine has become a major draw for the region, with no sign of slowing down.

As for the future, Pillsbury is feeling very optimistic. Over the last four years, 58 out of his 59 entries have won awards, bringing in two Best of Class, seven double gold and nine gold medals. It’s been a long, hard climb, but for the first time since he started making wine, his passion and tenacity are finally paying off.

After years of slow, incremental growth, sales have exploded, as have in-person visits to both the Cottonwood tasting room and the Willcox vineyard. “Every month of every year of the last twenty years, my wife and I look at our bills and look at our bank balance,” said Pillsbury. The question that kept coming up was, “What are we going to do?” The answer now seems clear. They will keep on making and selling award-winning wine, and more people will be enjoying the fruits of his labor.