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PILLSBURY WINE COMPANY, COCHISE COUNTY ARIZONA
Pillsbury Wine Company is the evolution of a Dream-Come-True project by NZ Film Director Sam Pillsbury.
Sam flew into Arizona to shoot a pilot for Universal Pictures and fell in love with an Arizona girl and the AZ landscape at the same time.
Growing up in NZ Sam witnessed the phenomenon of growing classical wine grapes in unusual places. Then on a camping trip in Arizona thought he could try the same thing here.
The location he picked was a high-altitude desert valley in Cochise County, 200 miles SE of Phoenix. This all came from a desire to get away from mass-produced ‘McDonalds’ wines and create a distinctive regional Boutique wine that was 100% Arizona and 100% original. He gambled that the high-altitude, endless sunshine, sandy loam and dry desert would make for a perfect Terroir, and in 2000 he planted 20 acres of Rhone varieties.
It worked.
In the less than two years since he released his first wines under the Pillsbury label the wines got a 93 from Mark Tarbell in the AZ Republic, a 'Best AZ Wine’ from the San Francisco Examiner, a rave from trendy Eateraz.com blog stating that these are the first wines from Arizona that we can say have a truly incredible tatse, ‘Best Local Winemaker’ from Phoenix Magazine, and a Gold Medal at the 2009 AWGA Festival for the 2007 Diva.
James Molesworth of the Wine Spectator called him one of the ‘Rising Stars of the Southwest’ and rated the 2007 Roan Red and 2007 Diva an 88. He gave the 2007 Pillsbury Petite Sirah 89, the highest score for an AZ wine from this publication.