High Desert Cheer - Exploring New Mexico's Craft Spirits

As with wine and beer, climate, quality of water and elevation continue to play a crucial role in the creation of spirits. Creativity is also an important component to the success of so many distillers in the area. According to Red River Brewing Company & Distillery founder Michael Calhoun, “Here in New Mexico, we have a unique sense of creativity, and generally don't feel constrained by centuries of tradition. We give ourselves permission to explore and try new things.”

In this final installment of our High Desert Cheer series, local experts share wins, lessons, tastes and trends in the New Mexican craft spirit scene.

How do you position New Mexico in regard to the domestic spirits scene?
New Mexico is still a very new craft spirits market. With craft distilling legal in the state for less than 15 years - it is still very up and coming, but even so, New Mexico Distilleries are winning awards and garnering national recognition like never before.

What's so special about New Mexico spirits?
I find that people who aren’t from New Mexico or haven’t spent a lot of time here often underestimate the biodiversity of our state. Despite the large amount of desert here, there are so many locally available botanicals to work with. I’m big into making botanical spirits and find myself constantly inspired by our beautiful natural environment and all of the special plants that grow in the area.

What are some of the challenges or particular elements that make it more difficult around here?
Whiskey maturation requires a little extra love in New Mexico due to the dry climate, and even more so in the mountain areas of the state like our home in Santa Fe. The high altitude and dry climate can increase spirits evaporation or angel share if distillers aren’t managing their rick house with added humidity. Water can also be a challenge. In our dry climate, we want to use water as sustainably as possible. It can be challenging to select water sources that provide quality flavor to the spirits while ensuring we’re consciously using water only as we need it. I’m grateful that our community is supportive of our efforts here.

What types of regional ingredients do you use?
We use piñon in our gin, although not the nuts that make the trees so famous. Instead, we’re using the resin from the trees, also called trementina. This ingredient has been used medicinally for a very long time, and provides the gin with the same incense type essence you can smell in the air here in Santa Fe.

What trends are you noticing in the craft spirits world these days?
I am excited to see gin and botanical spirits having more of a moment with consumer and craft bartenders. There is so much room for creativity in these categories, and an amazing opportunity to create a sense of place through ingredient selection.

More on As Above, So Below here.

How do you position New Mexico in regard to the domestic spirits scene?
New Mexico is one of the most exciting rising spirits regions in the county with a growing network of craft distilleries popping up across the state. We are sandwiched between Colorado and Texas, two states celebrated for distilleries and brewing chops. Colorado has a thriving craft distillery and brewing scene, while Texas, of course, is famed for its whiskey. This geographical positioning has sparked a natural desire among New Mexican distillers to craft spirits that are unique to the state we so proudly call home. This pride for our state is reflected in our team at VARA Winery & Distillery, who love to take their knowledge of the native landscape and find creative ways to encapsulate it in our spirits.

What's so special about New Mexican spirits?
New Mexican spirits have truly grown into their own over the past decade. While our distilling roots may not date as far back as our wine roots, distillers have made strides to unlock blending techniques that capture the heart of New Mexico. Our distilling team here at VARA Winery & Distillery lets the land guide our crafting decisions, drawing inspiration from sensory experiences one can only have in New Mexico, like breathing in the smell of the alpine foliage after a desert rainfall, showcased beautifully in our High Desert Gin. We are always looking for new and inventive ways to bring homegrown ingredients into spirits. Take our Painted Sky Vodka for example. We experimented with several recipes until we settled on a less traditional base made from grapes blended with our own Paso Uno Brandy to yield a creamy vodka with slight hints of citrus and New Mexican verve.

We can’t forget our incredible team spearheaded by head distiller Martin Ulloa, who has lived in New Mexico since he was 4 years old and is renowned throughout the state and beyond for his spirits and beer. Martin draws upon his time in New Mexico when crafting VARA spirits, with the goal of encapsulating our home state. You can’t craft New Mexican spirits without having people involved who are intimately familiar with the landscape and culture, and there is no better person to take on that challenge than Martin.

What are some of the challenges or particular elements that make it more difficult around here?
We are all about agriculture here in New Mexico, an element that plays to our advantage when sourcing ingredients to utilize in our artisan spirits. VARA Winery & Distillery is lucky to work with several local farmers who provide us with the best corn, wheat and barley the state has to offer. Outside of stellar agriculture, we have access to incredibly clean water that flows straight from the mountains into our spirits, a seemingly simple ingredient that makes all the difference when producing a quality bottle of spirits. The New Mexican high-desert air also has an impact on the aging of our spirits, which we keep in facilities that are intentionally not climate controlled to allow the natural environment to work its magic on the barrels. Our head distiller Martin Ulloa is especially excited about the effect this has on our brown spirits (rum and forthcoming whiskey), which will have a darker, slightly sweeter tone because of this arid climate, a uniqueness we strive to achieve.

What types of regional ingredients do you use?
The possibilities for experimenting with out-of-the-box ingredients in New Mexico are endless. Some of the more popular ingredients you will find in New Mexico spirits include green and red chile, lavender, piñon and an abundant variety of local botanicals. Our High Desert Gin was crafted with local botanicals in mind. Inspired by that scent that locals know all too well of the desert just after rainfall, when the pine, sage and desert air combine to create a truly magical sensory experience. A sip of the VARA High Desert Gin takes you right to that moment.

What trends are you noticing in the craft spirits world these days?
Tequila is king right now. Everywhere I look, tequila is dominating the spirits market and making headlines, which the distilling team at VARA Winery & Distillery has noted and is eagerly brainstorming ways to bring New Mexico into this growing agave trend.

Local sourcing has been a trend for a long time from a sustainability standpoint, so we’re really focusing on how to use mostly local ingredients across all of our products. This has been super rewarding for us as it brings us closer to our greater community.

And speaking of getting involved in the community, we’ve seen an uptick in local distilleries having tasting rooms and outposts where the experience can come full circle. VARA has tasting rooms in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, with plans for more across the state, where we welcome locals and visitors to taste through our spirits and learn from our wine and spirits educators about how the distillations are made, what they aim to express and how to use them to make delicious cocktails for any occasion.

More on VARA Winery & Distillery here.

Where or how do you position New Mexico in regard to the domestic spirits scene?
New Mexico is up and coming in the domestic spirits scene. The state has loads of great breweries for quite some time breweries, and now we have a handful of really wonderful distilleries.

What's so special about New Mexico spirits?
I think New Mexico’s emphasis on local is particularly special, with the seasonal local produce like the chiles and prickly pear. I can’t think of another US state with such a focus on seasonal local quite like we have here. That unmistakeable roasting chile smell late summer and early fall - there’s just nothing like it!

Other places do, of course, have seasonal local produce and other foods. Washington for apples and cherries, Illinois for sweet corn, Wisconsin for cheese, Maine for blueberries, etc. But the chiles and prickly pear are a bit more exotic and unique, and lend themselves beautifully to making truly individual, delicious spirits and cocktails. (Of course, I am biased because we use fresh chiles and prickly pear fruit in our products!)

What are some of the challenges or particular elements that make it more difficult around here?
Water is such a big factor in New Mexico, as it is such a precious resource and there isn’t enough of it. And being a key component of spirits, water is very important. So that can be a challenge. On the other hand, depending on where you are in New Mexico, we have the most delicious well water. The well water we have at our Placitas distillery is the best water I have ever tasted, and I think that makes a real difference in our products.

Our water is key in our two agave spirits, Burquila and NewMexcal, which are collaborations between New Mexico and our neighbor, Mexico. We import a delicious, bright, 100% Blue Agave Tequila from a distillery in Jalisco and a lovely, herbaceous and smoky 100% Maguey Espadin Mezcal from Oaxaca and blend them each with our delicious aquifer well water. Both are delightful just sipped but also make wonderful cocktails.

We are also mindful of the water we use, as it is such a precious, limited resource. My husband, Robert, designed a cooling system that recycles the water we use for cooling the stills during distillation, by recirculating it between tanks which naturally cools at night. The system also utilizes the by-product water from our RO process to top it off. We filled up the cooling tanks once when we installed them almost 5 years ago and have never had to top them off with fresh water.

What types of regional ingredients do you use?
To make our liqueurs and vermouths, we use very special, whole ingredients, local whenever available. As I mentioned above, we use local NM chiles - both fresh green chiles that we dark roast, and sun dried red chiles, plus delicately toasted spices - in our Red Sauce and Green Sauce liqueurs and local prickly pear fruit (tuna) that we hand pick (using tongs and gloves!) at a family farm near Socorro in our Purple People Eater prickly pear liqueur. It’s a race when we pick the prickly pear fruit to box them and get them into the freezers before they start to ferment! The color is gorgeous when the frozen tunas in the spirit infusion start to exude their juice. And the smell in the distillery is intoxicating!

Many of the herbs and spices we use in our two vermouths, we grow in our distillery garden. We grow fresh mint to make the liquor de menthe for our ready-to-drink cocktail called The Soothist, made with our small batch D’UVA1 brandy. We also work with local, award-winning chocolatier Eldora, who custom roasts a lovely, heritage cacao nib from Belize for our cacao liqueur. We tasted 11 different types of cacao bean to pick the perfect one for our liqueur.

What trends are you noticing in the spirits world these days?
I don’t really follow trends, but I do know that more and more people are looking for “clean”, more natural, small batch and artisan spirits. There has also been a real boom for ready-to-drink cocktails.

More on 505 Spirits here.