New Mexico | Wine Terms

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New Mexico

This southwestern state is the oldest known VITIS VINIFERA growing region in the United States. History tells us that in 1629 monks successfully planted MISSION vines in Senecu, an Indian pueblo south of the city of Socorro (about 80 miles south of Albuquerque). But it’s thought that there may have been earlier plantings in southern New Mexico, dating as far back as the late 1500s, over a century before the Spanish missionaries in California began planting. The viticultural area along the Rio Grande River was so successful that by the 1880s, it was the fifth largest wine-producing region in the United States with an annual output of about one million gallons of wine. Floods, crop disease, and PROHIBITION curtailed this copious production, finally bringing it to a halt in 1920. It wasn’t until the late 1970s and early 1980s that New Mexico’s wine industry began to revive. Winemakers realized that the high-desert climate’s long hot days (which allow grapes to mature and ripen to proper sugar levels) and cool nights (which help set good ACID levels) was favorable to the production of good wines. There are three approved AVAs in New Mexico—southern New Mexico has MESILLA VALLEY AVA and the MIMBRES VALLEY AVA; MIDDLE RIO GRANDE VALLEY AVA is in the middle of the state. Today there are nearly twenty-five wineries throughout the state. The best known is probably Gruet Winery—partially because the owners are French and partially because it produces great sparkling wine. Luarent Gruet and Farid Himeur started the winery in 1987. They came to New Mexico from the CHAMPANGE region in FRANCE where their families had produced sparkling wines since 1952 at Gruet Champagne.

Related Links: Vitis vinifera, Mission, Prohibition

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