Verde Valley News – Lisa Aguilar is a creative spirit with a taste for reinvention. When a successful career in Commercial Design no longer inspired her, she traded the comforts of corporate America and for the soil of the Verde Valley, rediscovered her muse, and caught the lightning of an emerging wine industry along the way. That is why Yavapai College has selected Lisa Aguilar as its 2024 Verde Valley Campus Alumni of the Year.
It’s impossible to tell the story of Yavapai College’s Southwest Wine Center without telling Lisa Aguilar’s story – and vice-versa. The two are intertwined and Lisa – a 2017 Viticulture & Enology graduate – wouldn’t have it any other way. She signed on for classes when the Southwest Wine Center was still mostly a blueprint and a dream; then graduated and put her stamp on the SWC as it grew to become a focal point for Northern Arizona’s prospering wine industry.
“This is an incredible place,” she says.
It was just a single certificate program when Lisa and her father, Bill Anderson, signed up for classes in 2013. At the time, Lisa had put her prosperous design career on hold – in the hope that growing grapes under the broad Arizona sky might ‘light me up.’ Lisa and Bill entered the two-year program and became part of the SWC’s now-legendary class. Learning viticulture, clearing fields, planting vines and creating the infrastructure for a teaching winery that has since fostered a host of successful vintners and countless award-winning wines.
“It didn’t feel like it then,” she recalls. “At the time, we’d tell each other, ‘We grow rocks really well.’ But we learned everything: how to lay out a vineyard, how to plant.” Lisa and the SWC thrived. She and Bill joined forces with local entrepreneur Bill Smoot to open Prescott Winery in 2013. Lisa won Viticulture & Enology’s 2015 Student of the Year while she was serving as General Manager for Prescott Winery and studying at the SWC and working part-time in their vineyard and their tasting room. She not only saw a future for herself in the wine industry but discovered that many of her designer skills were needed there.
“The whole [wine] industry is a big design problem,” she laughs. “You have the business side: Grape growing, winemaking, business finance management, branding and communication of brand. It’s about balancing all these elements together.”
In 2018, Lisa became manager of the Southwest Design Center’s Tasting Room. She ran with the job, becoming ambassador, spokesperson and advocate in the cozy haven between the winery and the vineyards. “There aren’t a lot of what I call ‘Trifectas’ in the Verde Valley – production, vineyard and tasting room all-in-one. We have something unique up here.”
She set a positive, inclusive tone for anyone who opened the SWC’s big iron door. “I don’t hold with the pretension that sometimes comes with the wine industry. What I loved was engaging with the people when they would visit.” Visitors received an enthusiastic welcome, rooted in the joy of creating wine. “We’d talk about the fruit grown at the YC vineyard, winemaking and our program.” She met people at their level of expertise, answered their questions, and stoked their curiosity. “I loved creating those experiences. Watching people enjoy wine, without stressing out about it. Because wine is a beautiful thing. It’s ceremonial and meant to be shared.”
Now, Lisa divides her time between helping her husband run his restaurant and pursuing her Champagne Masters certification – and she has returned to the Southwest Wine Center as a wine education workshop facilitator, doing the kind of outreach she loves.
“I facilitate workshops now. Bite-size, two-hour non-credit sessions with the community. Session One is a more expansive version of the educational wine-tasting, called ‘The SWC Experience.’ Session Two. ‘Tasting Around the World,’ is more about the grape: Origin, history, typical winemaking styles.” It’s designed to draw the enthusiastic and the curious, the same way she was drawn to the vineyards ten years ago.
“What I’m doing here really lights me up,” she says. “My goal is that, through these community workshops, others will want to take Viticulture and Enology program courses and begin their journey into the vast world of wine. It truly is a lifelong educational journey.”
The Yavapai College Alumni of the Year Award is bestowed annually on Prescott and Verde Valley graduates whose careers exemplify scholarship, character and public service. For further information on YC’s Alumni of the Year Awards, please visit: www.yc.edu/alumni
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