INSIDE THE MAY 2024 ISSUE: Allan’s Flowers Picks Mother’s Day Favorites p. 3 Bouncing into Summer Camp with Espire p. 4 Caregivers Find Support from Visiting Angels p. 8
Community Profile: The Canales Welcome Shoppers to Williams p. 12 Realtors Preparing for Industry Change p. 14 R & R Ranch Horses Teach Life Skills p. 20
Big Splash: Award-Winning Sake Brewer Lands in Northern Arizona
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By Peter Corbett, QCBN
rizona winemakers have been gaining recognition and acclaim for decades with vineyards and tasting rooms in the Verde Valley, Willcox, Sonoita and Elgin. That’s been coupled with a boom in craft breweries across the state. Now, a new player is 44-year-old Atsuo Sakurai, a Japanese immigrant.
He is making a name for himself as a small-batch brewer of premium sake, also mistakenly known as rice wine. Brewing sake is far different from making wine from grapes but Sakurai’s Arizona Sake business in Holbrook adds to the diversity of Arizona producers of wine, craft beer and distilled spirits. Holbrook is a high desert city of 5,000 people near the Navajo Reser-
vation that’s best known for Petrified Forest National Park, Wigwam Motel and other relics of Route 66, the Hash Knife Pony Express Ride and vast deposits of helium nearby. Arizona Sake, founded in 2017, has earned international praise and shined a spotlight on Holbrook with national media reports. “Making a good sake, we should be creative but at the same time stick to
the tradition,” Sakurai said. Arizona Sake was awarded a gold medal at the 2018 Tokyo Sake Competition for the Best Internationally Produced Sake. Sakurai also won the Best of Class Award last year in the Los Angeles International Wine Competition. That recognition has helped Sakurai sustain his sake brewery in a building on old Route 66 the size of
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FrameTec ‘Solving Big Problems,’ Creating 200 Jobs in Camp Verde problems and creating great jobs at the same time?” “I am delighted in FrameTec’s decision to Disrupting the construction industry,” locate their first U.S. manufacturing facility may be what FrameTec touts as its motto, but this cutting-edge component manufac- and corporate headquarters in Camp Verde,” turing and building framing company is also on said Camp Verde Mayor Dee Jenkins. “Bringing outstanding new businesses to the area is the verge of rocking the Town of Camp Verde a vision many have shared and worked on for workforce with the creation of 200-plus jobs. over a decade. FrameTec embodies everything Making its move to Camp Verde in early Camp Verde and the greater Verde Valley 2023, the 120,000-square-foot high-tech manufacturing plant is FrameTec’s first facility and values: good-paying jobs, innovative management and companies that believe in the concept will employ human in-the-loop automation of community partnership. Our community, equipment and machinery that will manufacture roof trusses, floor trusses and exterior and elected officials and town staff have worked diligently to position Camp Verde as a hub for interior wall panels. manufacturing in Central Arizona.” “We plan to open this fall,” said FrameTec Brock explains how the company is different CEO Kyle Brock. “Due to our innovative from other framing businesses. He says tradiapproach and our insatiable desire to create a tional wood framing requires framing crews on culture-rich environment for our people, we the jobsite measuring with steel tapes, cutting will be bringing significant building capacity with hand saws, and building with hammers to the homebuilding market where demand and nail guns. far outweighs supply. We are overwhelmed “The inexact process [of traditional wood with excitement. What’s better than solving big
“ CEO Kyle Brock says the highly automated FrameTec saves “a massive amount of lumber waste that you normally see on construction jobs.” Photo by V. Ronnie Tierney, Fresh Focuses Photography
May 2024 | Issue 5 Volume 12
By V. Ronnie Tierney, QCBN
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