by Andrew Chalk
Originally, this article, arising out of a visit to New Mexico organized and paid for by New Mexico Wine (the representative organization of New Mexico growers and winemakers) was to be called Southern New Mexico: Update on an Emerging Wine Region. However, in the course of my research I discovered that that article had already been written by Tyler Wetherall just a year earlier. So I commend that piece to you.
Instead, I have decided to write about some impressions I returned with about the New Mexico wine industry and to make a suggestion for enhancement that comes, as they say, right out of left field.
How many New Mexico Wineries can you name? For most of my wine tasting life it was “one”: Gruet Winery. The unique ingredient was Laurent Gruet.
Read what follows as a set of lessons for others thinking of winegrowing in New Mexico. A prescription if you will. It describes what the most successful and acclaimed New Mexico winemaker did at each of the junctures on the decision-tree, going from a fresh-off-the-boatplane immigrant to America, to the iconic position he ended up in today.
Gruet emigrated with his wife, Natalie, from France, where his father Gilbert had founded G Gruet & Fils in 1952 near Bethon in the Champagne region. Laurent’s expertise was the growing and making of Champagne. Land was so expensive there that he looked elsewhere for somewhere he could replicate, as closely as possible, the wine of Champagne. He talked to vintners in numerous places before settling on New Mexico in 1984.
Like so many other winemakers, early on he planted an experimental vineyard. In his case in Engle, about 10 miles from the provocatively named town of Truth or Consequences, choosing chardonnay and pinot noir. He went on to use that fruit in champagne-style sparkling wine that was so good it put New Mexico on the US wine map as a sparkling wine producer.
Initially it was appellated New Mexico, but demand grew so much that grapes were added from elsewhere in the USA. As a result, the appellation changed to American.
The significant thing for New Mexico, in this experience, was that Laurent Gruet created a world-class sparkling wine from New Mexico fruit because of his human capital vested in growing and making Champagne. Other winemakers had been given a formula, a recipe, for success. They don’t need to change anything in Laurent Gruet’s formula. If they do, they have to be hauled up before the Excellence Star Chamber to account for it.
A one-off? We may get to see as Gruet Winery was sold to Precept Brands in 2015. Laurent excited in December 2020 to found VARA Wines and Distillery to considerable early acclaim.
VARA is not what I would have expected at all. Of over 20 current wines, only two use New Mexico fruit. The others are mainly from Spain and California. Some are even blends of the two countries’ fruit (would these be appellated “Planet Earth”?). It is avant garde and elevated stuff, critics love them, but it has nothing to do with New Mexico fruit. Rather, the state is his showroom. That is all. He has three tasting rooms, all where the people are.
The winery is closed to visitors. Thus Laurent, version deux, has dropped the idea of the winery as a customer pull destination. Instead, he is going out to where his customers are likely to be and establishing a customer push tasting experience there. One of the tasting rooms even has a restaurant attached.
And unlike Gruet Winery, which used the three-tier system to grow annual sales to over 200,000 cases nationally, VARA is, at least for now, focusing on a one-tier model. This is the same situation faced by almost all New Mexico wineries.
If Laurent were to make some award-winning still wines from New Mexico fruit he would have completed the circuit, in terms of New Mexico’s wine potential. He would be the free-thinking genius of both still and sparkling wine, with his position assured in state wine history.
However, establishing New Mexico’s reputation nationally for still wine does not have to wait for Laurent. One alternative is already happening. There are several winemakers making very good wine in the state. I discussed them here. Their problem is not the quality of their product, but finding the resources to inform wine aficionados outside New Mexico of the story taking place in the state.
A second, additional, alternative might be to replicate what happened with sparkling wine, with still wine. That is, pick a grape. Pay the world’s leading expert on growing it and making wine from it to do so in New Mexico. Initially, as just a one-off project over, say, five years. The publicity alone might do the trick if, for example, the winemaker of Vega Sicilia were to be brought in to make a Unico style blend of tempranillo and cabernet sauvignon, maybe named Uno y Solo as an homage to the original.
Who would pay for this? I look at it as analogous to a venture investment in a startup. I.e. it will make money eventually, but with a multi-year lead time. So start working down the top venture capital funds in New Mexico.
The person to have oversight of this is Chris Goblet, Executive Director of New Mexico Wine, the wine industry promotion body. He earlier persuaded the legislature to pay for vine planting by showing that the sales tax returned on the wine sales was ten times the cost of planting the vines. The same kind of innovative and open-minded thinking could convince private money to make this kind of ‘moonshot’ investment. The rest will be history.
Just a thought.