New Mexico Wine Festival

This is the biggest and oldest New Mexico wine festival. Come and enjoy the live entertainment, food, high quality arts and crafts and 20 or more New Mexico wineries. There is free wine tasting and wine is available for purchase by the glass, bottle, or case.

The wine tradition started in 1872 when the La Salle Christian Brothers, a Catholic teaching ordercame to Bernalillo to establish a high school. The St. Nicholas School For Boys and a farm were built across from Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church on lands donated by the prominent Perea family.

As a means of funding the school, the Christian Brothers operated the La Salle Ranch and in 1883, they opened the La France Winery. In 1887, the Christian Brothers traveled to California to seeking hardier grape varieties than those that had been introduced into the Rio Grande Valley by early European settlers in the 1600’s. They returned with grapevine cuttings of Black Malvoise, Malbec, Zinfandel, Mataro, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petite Pino, and Cohasselas Fountainbleu.

Unlike wineries of other Catholic Orders, the Christian Brothers did not make wine themselves. In 1917 they hired Lois Gros, of a French wine-making family in Bernalillo, who produced over 10,000 gallons of wine per year until 1920. In 1921 an Italian wine maker from Tuscany by the name of Giovanni Giorgio Rinaldi leased the La France Winery. He operated the winery throughout the prohibition era until 1933. The La France Winery was the only winery in New Mexico allowed to remain open during prohibition as Archbishop of Santa Fe Albert Daguer had arranged to have this winery produce sacramental wine for all of the Catholic churches in the state.

Rinaldi was a progressive wine grower, and in the early 1920’s he enlisted the help of the agricultural staff of New Mexico A&M College, now New Mexico State University, in Las Cruces, New Mexico. With their assistance, he experimented with several types of grapes and grape growing styles and significantly increased production. Zinfandel in a Burgundy style, still remembered by elder Bernalillo residents, was a result of such experimentation.

The Bernalillo winery predates the famous California Christian Brothers Winery in Napa Valley, which in the 1950’s indicated some interest in a grape brandy produced in Bernalillo that had developed a reputation for its quality. The Christian Brothers closed the winery in 1948 and sold the entire La Salle Ranch.

New Mexico Wine Growers Association
370 Camino del Pueblo
Bernalillo, NM 87004
Phone (505) 867-3311
www.newmexicowinefestival.com