Premier Regions
New Mexico's most celebrated wine regions — the essential destinations for any wine country visit.
About New Mexico Wine Country
New Mexico is where American wine began. Spanish Franciscan missionaries planted the first vinifera grape vines in what is now the United States around 1629 at the Rio Grande missions — nearly 400 years ago, more than a century before the first California missions planted vines, and two centuries before the first American vineyards opened in Kentucky and Missouri. New Mexico doesn't just have a wine heritage; it has America's wine heritage.
Gruet Winery has become New Mexico's most famous wine ambassador to the world. Founded by the Gruet family from the Champagne region of France who discovered that New Mexico's high-altitude vineyards produced ideal base wine for méthode champenoise sparkling wine production, Gruet's bubbles have been served at the White House and earned the kind of national attention that put New Mexico on the serious wine drinker's map.
Beyond Gruet, New Mexico's wine scene encompasses Tempranillo in the Mesilla Valley that tastes like a Rioja cousin, Cabernet Franc from Santa Fe-area mountain vineyards at 7,000 feet, and a revival of heritage Mission grape wines from the Rio Grande's oldest vineyard sites. New Mexico wine is for those who appreciate history in their glass and a landscape that looks like no other wine country in the world.
More New Mexico Wine Regions
Every corner of New Mexico wine country — from the most visited to the hidden gems.
