Wine festival attracts new generation of vintners
Jasper Riddle, a former Ruidoso High School linebacker and fullback who spent his college years making beer, is among a new generation of New Mexico vintners helping to expand an industry that’s less than a half-century old in the state.
Riddle, 31, was featured in a recent article in Wine Enthusiast Magazine: “Meet the Producers That are Redefining American Wine.”
“We have 14 wines that are making their way into the national and potentially international market,” Riddle said in a phone interview from his Noisy Water Winery in Ruidoso. Noisy Water is one of 20 wineries that will be represented Saturday and Sunday at the
25th annual Santa Fe Wine Festival at El Rancho de las Golondrinas in La Cienega.
There is “a lot of new energy” in winemaking in the state, said Chris Goblet, executive director of the trade industry group New Mexico Wine, a partner in the weekend festival. The industry started with just one winery back in 1973, he said, and the trade group now represents 48.
“We have multiple second-generation and a bunch of new, young enthusiastic winemakers who have opened in the last few years,” he said. “… New Mexico wine is experiencing a renaissance.”
Riddle said he believes the craft beer movement has helped encourage consumers to become “more adventurous,” trying a wider variety of products, which has been a boon to the wine industry.
But unlike beer, Goblet said, “it takes generations to develop a winery.”
Craft beer producers will be represented alongside winemakers at the festival, which also has grown over the years, becoming a popular summer event for locals and tourists alike.
This year, the wine festival is expanding its lineup of live entertainment.
“We are definitely going to have a large group of performers this year,” said events manager Vic Macias.
Moonshine Blind of Albuquerque will take the stage from noon to 2:45 p.m. Saturday with its brand of bluegrass, punk rock, rockabilly and Irish music, followed by South American rhythms from Santa Fe-based Baracutanga from 3 to 5:30 p.m.
The Partinazi Brass Band will be entertaining from noon to 2:30 p.m. Sunday, followed by the Boomroots Collective from 3 to 5:30 p.m.
And for festivalgoers who want to ensure they have a safe ride home from the event, the North Central Regional Transit District is offering fare-free shuttles to the wine festival.
One Blue Bus will provide nine round trips beginning at 11:10 a.m. at the Sheridan Street Transit Center, with stops at New Mexico Visitor Center lot at Paseo de Peralta and Old Santa Fe Trail, the South Capitol Rail Runner Station and the Santa Fe Place mall’s south-side parking lot.
A second bus will run every half-hour from the N.M. 599 Rail Runner Station, for both train commuters and people who prefer to park at the train station lot and avoid parking congestion at Las Golondrinas.
Riddle, who earned a degree in business administration from the University of Arizona and did some graduate work at the University of California-Davis, known for its winemaking curriculum, said he spent summers as a child in New York state helping relatives harvest garlic and apples, and that’s where he was introduced to winemaking.
“I learned as a child making wine out in the barn with my uncles,” he said.
In college he was making “beer and wine and anything I could play around with … anything that I could turn into alcohol that we could enjoy,” he said. “It was a good party trick.”
Riddle purchased an inchoate wine bar from his parents eight years ago and now runs the winery with his mother, Mary Jo Piedmont.
Noisy Water also operates a tasting room on San Francisco in Santa Fe as well as three in Ruidoso and one in Cloudcroft.
“There’s been no looking back,” said Riddle, who leases eight vineyards statewide and works with 50 different varietals, including award-winning merlots and malbecs.
Goblet said there’s really no dominant grape in the state, with winemakers planting a range from French to German to Italian and producing an array of vintages.
“There are no boundaries, no rules,” he said. “We are not defined by a varietal.”