Feb 28 2009
New Mexico Wine
This is the 17th installment find the 1st one here
Traveling for a large company as I do, takes me to some really strange, wonderful and interesting places. On just that type of a 3 day trip to do “all-day” meetings I ended up in Albuquerque, New Mexico in the fall of 2007. I stumbled onto a local winery when I was unconsciously thumbing through the rack of pamphlets and brochures for the local area near the elevator at the hotel, mostly out of boredom, waiting for it to come back down to the lobby. One caught my eye as it was a winery/tasting room/restaurant not far from the hotel and meeting facility.
I mentioned my little “find” to a friend at the meetings as he also is always in search of well priced, new wines to try. He agreed that after the meetings that day, we would find our way to the winery to do the tasting and have some fun touring the area.
The trip was short and we had little trouble finding the faux “old mission” styled building. We walked in and saw rows of bottles – all New Mexico wines. I really did not know that New Mexico produced that many varieties. I wondered if we’d be tasting cactus juice or aloe vera wines! Much to my amazement we sat down and looked at the list of wines that we could sample and there we’re all my old favorites; cabernet, merlot, zinfandel, chardonnay, etc. We could pick 8 wines for $15. We sat at a private table and decided to get the same wines so we could compare our perceived taste of each variety. We did 2 white and 6 reds.
I think it was the 3rd sample, a reserve merlot, that when we tasted it we looked at each other with total shock. This stuff is really good! We could not believe the extremely lively, smooth taste and the long mellow finish. It sat at the top of the list of the wines we tried that night (which were all good wines, by the way). We then checked out the price and we were blown away again! It was only $15.50 per bottle!
We were on a tight time schedule that night and had to get back for evening meetings, but promised each other that we would come back the next evening for dinner and a bottle of two of that great merlot. Believe me; the second trip was better than the first. Great food, great wine, great company; that’s what it is all about!
I’ve since bought the new release (Sinclair 2006 ‘Reserve Merlot’) from their web-site and the 2006 was even better than the 2005 that we tasted on that trip last fall. New Mexico wine – who’d of “thunk”?
Jim Albinger (Andrew’s dad) grew up in smalltown northwest Iowa in the 1950’s. He has been writing down his experiences looking back at all that has shaped his current wine tasting hobby. Expect to see more of Jim’s writings here at offthecork.com.
