The Phoenix metropolitan area is a sprawling patchwork of townships and suburbs covering some 15,000 square miles, and it can feel as endless as the seemingly barren desert that surrounds it. That wilderness is more than just sun-scorched sands and towering saguaro cacti, though; it displays a stunning diversity of natural beauties if you know where to look, and Jonathan Buford is a man driven to bring the wild spirit of Arizona into his brewery.
Buford and his partners Patrick Ware (brewmaster) and Brett Dettler (business manager) opened Arizona Wilderness Brewing Co. in Gilbert—an incorporated town between the center of the sprawl and the farmlands along its southeast border—in 2013. Even after a successful Kickstarter campaign, the team struggled to open the doors. They almost went bankrupt the month before opening, but the local beer lovers embraced the creative offerings of the first brewpub in Gilbert. Just a few months after opening, Arizona Wilderness was honored by RateBeer as the best new brewery in the world (topping a list that included fan-favorites Modern Times Brewing, Rhinegeist, and Trillium Brewing).
The award launched Arizona Wilderness into the beer-geek limelight, and intrepid Valley of the Sun beer lovers flocked to the brewpub to taste “the best.” The imaginative beers highlighting unique ingredients sourced from local farms and from the wilderness itself were lauded, but Buford says that the honor was a double-edged sword. “I don’t agree that we were the best,” he says. “We could not believe it, and we weren’t prepared for it.” The exposure meant huge expectations for the beers, and he says meeting those expectations was the biggest challenge. “If someone reads an article that calls us the best and they come into the pub and expect to get the best, that’s a really hard thing. But of course, I was honored by it, and our story really started there.”