Noisy Water: Ruidoso winery opens tasting room in Santa Fe
Ruidoso winery behind new Santa Fe tasting room aims to stir up the industry
Jasper Riddle wants to make noise in the wine industry. His winery, Noisy Water, which is based in Ruidoso and recently opened a tasting room in Santa Fe, has sought to make some waves in an industry that, in Riddle’s opinion, is overdue for a little shaking up.
Riddle’s family moved to Ruidoso (“ruidoso” means noisy in Spanish) in the 1980s, and they owned a T-shirt screen printing and embroidery shop. But Riddle grew up in a family that understands wine.
“My father is a sommelier and my mother’s family is from Italy, fifth-generation farmers on that side, in winemaking,” Riddle says.
Still, Noisy Water, was, as he puts it, “more or less a wine shop that featured New Mexico wine with a little amateur winemaking ability” when his parents started the business.
That changed in 2010, when Riddle took over the label. Riddle’s professional background is in sports, coaching college football and working in broadcasting at NBC Sports. And while he loved the work, the home terroir called to him.
“I almost had a midlife crisis in my 20s,” he says. “I was looking for my Social Security card, my hiring information, and I couldn’t find anything, and I was calling friends and family to check storage units of different cities I had lived in, and I wondered, why don’t I have a home base and a dog and a girlfriend or anything?”
Riddle wanted something more stable. So, when his parents called him and asked if he knew anyone who wanted to buy their little wine business, he said he did.
“Winemaking was always something I did with my mother’s uncles — they’re from northern Italy,” he says. “And my father being a sommelier, I was always around fine dining and fine wine. It was a cool party trick in college; I knew how to make alcohol.”
Riddle spent part of his coaching career at Stanford, spitting distance from California’s wine country, and he made the most of it. “I’d pop in [to a friend’s winery] and say I’d love to help here and there.” The friend eventually told him, “You know, you have a knack for this. Have you ever considered it?”
Noisy Water grows its own grapes, but Riddle also buys grapes from his neighbors and others around the state who might have something interesting on the vine. The winery’s surprisingly long list ranges from both sweet and dry whites to big-bodied reds to dessert wines and even bubbly. Most of its wines can be sorted into two broad categories: the highbrow reserves, such as the Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay and the May wine of the month, the Reserve Petit Verdot, and the, perhaps, more democratic labels.
Riddle’s aim is to take wine in the same direction as craft beer — fun, approachable and often irreverent, both in terms of names and sometimes in terms of flavors. Two of Noisy Water’s pillar blends are Big Legs Red and the award-winning Tighty Whitey, the label for which features Riddle, his assistant winemaker and the director of distribution in their underwear.
“That’s what I want the wine industry to be,” he says. Despite the lack of gravitas (or because of it), Tighty Whitey is one of Noisy Water’s most popular wines.
“When you’re making wine for people who have never had wine before, you want to break through that wall,” he says. “Wine is very intimidating to the average consumer. I was lucky enough to grow up around it, but jumping into a bottle of wine with some friends at a restaurant, half the table starts sweating when you think about what you are going to drink for dinner.”
And in that craft beer spirit of innovation, novelty and — sometimes — gimmickry, Riddle has a couple of popular wines aimed at those who like a little kick:
a white wine infused with green chile and a red wine infused with red.
“Making chile wine is an absolute nightmare,” he says, laughing. “Chile is not something you work with in alcohol production a whole lot, and it’s really oily; you have to tear your whole winery apart every time you bottle and make it. We have dedicated equipment now to making chile wine. Chile has a way of permeating to stuff and not going away.”
Noisy Water’s production facility is in Alto, on the outskirts of Ruidoso, with three tasting rooms in Ruidoso and one in Cloudcroft, and now a new tasting room in Santa Fe, on San Francisco Street next door to the Lensic Performing Arts Center. The doors opened in December, but Riddle still considers it a soft open, with a grand opening scheduled for June. In the meantime, Noisy Water is slowly finding its final form, reflecting its new clientele.
“In Ruidoso, people come in, try, buy and take out,” he says. In Santa Fe, they want to hang out and relax, have a glass or two with their friends.” In that spirit, Noisy Water is adding a few beers to the lineup in addition to the 20-25 wines it plans to feature at a time (tastings are $10 for four, amounting to a full glass).
“We do have a drier audience in Santa Fe. They want more of the reserves, more of the smaller-batch stuff.” Riddle has started sending up a “wine of the month” and could even make some wines exclusively for the tasting room.
And because wine is best appreciated with a mouth coated in fat and oil and salt, Noisy Water is slowly developing its nosh program, feeling out clientele and seeing what flies. At the moment, it’s offering a cheese-and-charcuterie platter, stocked with a smattering of local cheeses from Tucumcari, some of Riddle’s favorites from Wisconsin and some cave-aged cheeses from upstate New York (where his mother is from).
Noisy Water also encourages customers to bring food in, a sort of backward BYOB, and the staff at Noisy Water will help them pair it with wines. But then, Noisy Water seems like the kind of tasting room where you can bring in a burger and fries and not get side-eye.
“There are so many weird stigmas and nuances in the wine industry that I feel like it’s time to break,” Riddle says. “A lot of our marketing is kind of made to help knock that down. … The wine industry doesn’t do itself any favors. If you look at what craft beer is doing, they’re tearing down those old stereotypes.
“I mean, look. We’re making alcohol. Let’s not take this too seriously.”