High Desert Cheer - Exploring New Mexico's Wines

It’s been almost 400 years since Franciscan monks Fray Garcîa de Zuñiga and Antonio de Arteaga smuggled vines out of their home country and planted New Mexico’s first grapes just south of modern-day Socorro, resulting, over time, in diverse offerings that are vibrant in flavor and steeped in history.

Currently, New Mexico is home to more than 50 wineries, over 60 tasting rooms, numerous festivals and countless winery tours, with vintner’s producing tens of thousands of gallons of wine annually, resulting in an economic impact in the millions of dollars, as well as a broad variety of exceptional wines whose flavor profiles are bolstered by unique characteristics such as high elevation vineyards, the influence of the desert climate, and the use of traditional winemaking techniques.

In this second of our 3-part series on New Mexico beer, wine and spirits, discover what local wine experts are particularly excited about these days in terms of products, flavors, trends and terroir.

Where do you position New Mexico in regard to the domestic and international wine scene?
New Mexico doesn't get the attention it deserves and not enough people put NM on the top for wine production. Honestly, before living here I didn't think of NM when I thought of wine!

What's so special about New Mexico wine?
The history and the people surrounding NM wine is what makes it some of the best wine and the most special. NM wine has been around since the 1600s, which is long before a vine had even been planted in the better known regions of the US! With NM diurnal shift (high and low temp change from day to night), sandy soil, and high elevation NM wines have a unique flavor over anything I've ever tasted. That takes us back to the people - the wine community is supportive and has a family aspect to it like I've never seen in any other work I've been in. The people love wine, love the fruit they grow to make the wine, and love seeing each other succeed.

What kinds of challenges do you encounter around these parts?
Weather and rainfall. However a lot of winemakers and vineyards combat this with drip irrigation. This said, the disadvantage - namely the environment and diurnal shift - is also the advantage.

What are some of the more interesting ingredients you have seen in local wine?
1- Hatch green chile. This may sound like a novelty, but it's not! The besito caliente green chile wine we sell is infused with hatch chiles during fermentation. This is a tricky process and gives a super unique flavor.

2- Rojo caliente. Made with famous Chimayo rojo chiles, this popular wine has a little more of a kick. So often people who "don't like wine" will try this and love it!

3- Wild white. Our wild white is one of the most unique things I've had, and one of my personal favorites. It's a chenin blanc-base infused with a local lavender sage lemonade tea (from Old Barrel Tea Company). The flavor is like a crisp sun tea Arnold Palmer, with the smell of sage you get in the high deserts of northern New Mexico. It's honestly something everyone should try.

4- Skin fermented Chenin Blanc. This one's a little closer to traditional, but unconventional at the same time. Skin fermentation or orange fermentation gives the white wine a little more of a tannic feel with a nice orange flavor. The 2nd part about this wine that makes it original is its aged in acacia...not oak! I get a mesquite substance smoke on the flavor. I love this one as well.

More on Noisy Water Winery here.

How do you position New Mexico in regard to the domestic wine scene?
New Mexico is an up-and-coming region and our quality is really exploding. The wineries across the state are making better and better wine every year. My company, Sheehan Winery, has been fortunate enough to win the best wine in the state 3 years in a row at the state wine competition. And just this year, we've gotten our first 90 point scores, both in New York-based Wine & Spirits magazine, and in London-based Decanter magazine. It's great to see that New Mexico wine is being accepted not only in New Mexico, but also getting big awards both nationally and internationally.

What is so special about New Mexico wines?
What is really exciting and wonderful about New Mexico wine is that we have a growing region as large as the country of Spain. This allows us so many different grape varietals, blending options, and excellent vineyards where we can both grow grapes ourselves and purchase from. So as a winemaker and as a winery owner, it gives us the opportunity to showcase so many different styles. We have the warm, rich, bright, fruit-forward styles that come from our the vineyards we contract with in Las Cruces and Deming, in the southern part of the state. And at the same time, we have more subtle and earthy, European-style wines that we can make from the vineyards in the Albuquerque area.

Last year, we purchased fruit from 16 different small growers throughout the state, as far south as the border, as far north as Abiquiu, as far west as the Continental divide, and as far east as the border with Texas. So we are taking the very best fruit from throughout New Mexico and making interesting, compelling, site-specific wines - wines that speak to the place where they're grown. What makes New Mexico wine interesting, exciting and compelling is that we are able to offer wines that can be kind of anything. We can offer subtle and earthy and very kind of old-world in style wines, or ones that are bright and juicy and fun and everything in between. We have big, powerful wines, and really light and fruity wines. Given the size of New Mexico and the dramatically different growing conditions, regions, weather, soil and all that stuff allows for so many different grapes to play with and so many different colors of paints for our palette. Resulting in wines that are exceptionally different, interesting, and cool.

What are some of the challenges or particular elements that make it more difficult around here?
From my perspective, the challenges have always been more on the winemaking side than on the grape growing side. I think that the grapes have always been world class. We are a cooler growing region from the Napa Valley, almost entirely across the state. So we have longer growing seasons and arguably better fruit than they do in some of the most prestigious wine growing regions in the world. The problems initially with the New Mexico wine industry were a lack of winemaking knowledge, lack of equipment and a lack of capitalization. And we're really overcoming that these days.

What are some of the more interesting ingredients you've seen in local wines?
We have friends making really fun and interesting wines with chile, chocolate and chokeberry - lots of different ingredients that you won’t find anywhere else in the country. For us, at Sheehan, all of our wines are grape-based, so we don't add anything to the wine to change the flavor. That being said, we make a lot of different styles that are sort of unique to New Mexico or unusual in the general world of wine. We just released New Mexico's first natural wine, Nádúrtha. It is a product of spontaneous and continuous fermentation throughout the entirety of the harvest. It's a big natural blend that is really fruit forward, really juicy and with a ton of complexity because it has so many different things in it.

We also just released an Angelica-style wine, a white port wine, which is unusual. It is made in a style that was originally pioneered by the Franciscan monks in the 1800s, where we're using Malvasia Bianca grapes and stopping the fermentation with brandy that's actually made by a local distillery using our wine. One of the cool things about New Mexico wine is there's a lot of flexibility, which gives us winemakers a lot of freedom to make fun, exciting, different wines.

What trends are you noticing in the wine world these days?
People are more adventurous in their wine drinking than they used to be. They are expanding beyond just Chardonnay and Cabernet and trying new varietals and styles across the board, which really benefits us because that's where my palate is, and that's where my kind of excitement is, is in sharing all these different wonderful grape varietals and wonderful food and wine pairing opportunities. It makes it more exciting. It makes it more dynamic.

More on Sheehan Winery here.

How do you position New Mexico in regard to the domestic wine scene?
New Mexico is a special winemaking region when it comes to the domestic wine scene. Most people don’t know that winemaking happens in New Mexico despite its longstanding history in America, dating back to 1629 when Spanish missionaries brought mission grapes through New Mexico as they journeyed to California. Generally, the region is overlooked for grape growing due to the extreme weather, soil and climate, but our expert team proves sourcing quality grapes from New Mexico is possible and delicious. We are currently blending New Mexican grapes with other Spanish varieties from California and Spain, and we’re increasingly trying to procure more and more from New Mexico for our portfolio.

What’s so special about New Mexico wine?
New Mexico is home to the versatile mission grape called Listan Prieto, a Vitis Vinifera grape first brought to the area in the 1600s. The variety is a secret weapon in New Mexican winemaking, still relatively unknown to the general public since it does not frequently get planted outside of Spain. The mission grape thrives in the arid New Mexican landscape and incorporates beautifully into a number of still, fortified and sparkling wines. Additionally, the elevation levels throughout New Mexico are varied, which helps growers take advantage of the diversity of microclimates. For example, Riesling, which typically needs a cooler growing climate to preserve its bright, acidic flavors, grows beautifully in the higher-elevated regions of New Mexico.

What are the challenges around these parts?
New Mexico is a high desert climate, which is a somewhat unusual environment for growing and making wine. We have elevation, the elements, extreme diurnal shifts and a lack of water, all of which put stress on the vines and yield really complex flavors. New Mexico’s soils are also not consistently nutrient dense, which comes in part as a result of the rivers flowing through down to Mexico and taking nutrients with them - this struggle is actually good as the vines have to grow deeper roots to get what they need, leading to complexity and idiosyncrasy in the fruit, which we love expressing when we use grapes from New Mexico.

What are some of the more interesting ingredients you have seen in local wines?
New Mexican cuisine is, of course, driven by spicy, chile flavors, which pair nicely with sweet wines, so there are a lot of wines in that flavor profile being made here. I’ve also seen wines with green chile or red chile added, as a nod to one of New Mexico’s most famous outputs. At VARA, however, we pride ourselves on making dry table wines that are seriously good, and we’re honored to have Laurent Gruet as a partner at VARA, who has the best connections to grape growers here than anyone. We are currently in the midst of expanding our vineyard partners in New Mexico so we can source from our home state. We are proudly New Mexican and want to continue doing everything we can to bottle the essence of the place we call home.

What trends are you noticing in the wine world these days?
One of the biggest trends in the wine industry right now is trying to figure out how to appeal to a younger audience and also capture the interest of Millennials and Gen Z when it comes to wine. At VARA, we make wines that are really good but also really fun and approachable. Our tasting rooms’ wine classes are a super engaging way to break down the barriers to entry with wine and give our guests enough information to feel more comfortable enjoying wine and like they have a vocabulary to discuss it and not be intimidated.

We are also seeing a trend toward increased interest in sparkling wine, which is really exciting because again, we have one of the country’s best sparkling winemakers, Laurent Gruet, helming our sparkling Silverhead program and a partner here at VARA. The VARA Silverhead Brut and VARA Silverhead Brut Rosado really capture that fun, celebratory spirit while also being absolutely delicious and priced for everyday drinking, too.

More on Vara Winery & Distillery here.