Twenty-four years ago, Phoenix native Todd Bostock was a fan, but not well-versed in wine. During a shopping trip to AJ’s Fine Foods on Central Avenue and Camelback Road, he was intrigued by Dos Cabezas WineWorks.
“The quality was as good as anything I had, but it seemed distinctive and different,” he said. “That seemed exciting to me. I immediately tracked down winemakers in the south of Arizona.”
Working as a graphic designer, Bostock put his job on hold to serve as an apprentice under Al Buhl and Frank DiChristofano, the masterminds behind Dos Cabezas WineWorks. At the time, the vineyard was in Kansas Settlement, an unincorporated agricultural community in Cochise County’s Sulphur Spring Valley, 15 miles south of Willcox.
“By default,” Bostock became the winemaker in 2002. With the help of his family, he and his wife, Kelly, took over Dos Cabezas WineWorks and moved it to Sonoita.
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The fruit suppliers are Pronghorn Vineyard in Sonoita and Cimarron Vineyard in the Kansas Settlement. Dos Cabezas WineWorks averages about 5,000 cases of wine per year.
Under the couple’s direction, Dos Cabezas has built a distribution footprint spanning Valley restaurants and independent retailers, including Pizzeria Bianco, FnB Restaurant and Beckett’s Table.
Dos Cabezas has its own restaurant as well, Pronghorn Pizza, which was launched during the COVID-19 pandemic to keep its team employed and the farm alive.
“Kelly and I quickly learned how to make pizza,” he said with a laugh. “We bought a food truck, put a wood-burning pizza oven on it, and parked it out back. We thought we could serve our locals. We lost all of our tourists. We lost all of our restaurant customers during COVID.
“We started to open our patio — we had this great patio — and started serving pizza. It’s based on the sourdough that we started in the barrel room. We were able to hire a bunch of local folks who had been laid off because of COVID or had moved back. So, we have talented folks working for us, making pizza.”
The restaurant isn’t exclusively pizza. The gluten-free caviar includes Tsar Nicoulai I estate 0.5-ounce, California Lay’s potato chips 1.5-ounce, and crème fraiche. ($40)
“It’s like the walking taco, where you open up a bag of Frito’s and put stuff in it,” he said. “So, we crack open a bag of Lay’s potato chips. We can serve some really nice California caviar crème fraiche. It’s really simple. We serve it with a pink Dairy Queen taster spoon.
“We’re trying to take something that can seem unapproachable and turn it into something you can splurge on. That’s supposed to be fun, not pretentious or serious. It’s fun and delicious.”
Dos Cabezas WineWorks recently celebrated its 30th anniversary of producing well-thought-out original wines. He stressed that he is not trying to replicate other wines in, say, Napa.
“I can be inspired by that, but translate it into something that’s great here,” he said. “We want to put stuff on the table that hits a spot that somebody else can’t. Bordeaux still gets to be Bordeaux, and Napa gets to be Napa, and we get to be us. We all sit on the table and serve different functions.”
Included in that is Malvasia; Dos Cabezas WineWorks was the first in Arizona to plant the grape variety.
“We decided to release a single varietal, Malvasia, in honor of the Buhls. It’s probably something we’ll continue to do,” Bostock said. “Most people did not expect us to last 30 years, but folks from all over seem to be into it.”
