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Rising Sun will taste torta award Mail Tribune / Drew Fleming Workers at the Rising Sun Farms production center in Phoenix layer ingredients into the company�s award-winning tortas. Company owners will accept yet another award for their products in New York next week. Institute will honor cheese concoctions By SHARI DOWNHILL PHOENIX � Pungent pesto and crushed dried tomato permeate the air at Rising Sun Farms� production facility, where workers layer the ingredients to create the company�s award-winning cheese tortas. The tortas have earned the company�s owners, Elizabeth and Richard Fujas, the American Tasting Institute�s Award of Excellence, which they�ll receive at Carnegie Hall in New York City next Wednesday. The recognition is part of the 15th annual American Gold Medal Food and Beverage Awards. The Award of Excellence is the latest in more than 20 awards Rising Sun has earned since 1989 for outstanding products, packaging and as an innovative company. The couple operated a yacht charter service in the Caribbean before moving to the Colestin Valley in 1980. They soon learned that processing pesto from the basil they grew high in the Siskiyous was more profitable than crops. The Fujas began Rising Sun Farms as a small organic operation in 1983, growing basil and other herbs and developing a burgeoning line of gourmet products. Still situated on the same 28-acre farm on South Pacific Highway between Phoenix and Talent, the company now produces more than 80 products including a line of tortas, oil-free vinaigrettes, marinades, and pestos. Rising Sun produced and shipped about 133,500 tortas across the country last year. The company�s expansion includes a recently completed 12,000-square-foot warehouse. Rising Sun employs a staff that varies in size from 10 during slow periods to up to 90 at peak production times in the fourth quarter � when tortas are in highest demand for the holidays. In addition to producing their own label for grocery store distribution, Rising Sun also produces private label products for Harry & David, Norm Thompson, Hickory Farms and Pittman Davis, said operations manager Chris Henry. Rising Sun Farms operates an on-site store and will hold a warehouse sale April 6, 7, 13 and 14. The sale is open to the public. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.