I attended the 31st Annual New Mexico Vine and Wine Conference on Friday and Saturday in Albuquerque, NM. The Conference had a wonderful new venue for this years conference at the Hotel Albuquerque close to the historic "old town" district near downtown Albuquerque.
This was my second year attending the conference. If your state has something similar I highly recommend attending. This conference has something for both the amateur winemaker as well as commercial wineries and vineyards. The cost was a very reasonable $150 for the two days which included continental breakfast as well as lunch and afternoon breaks on both days. They also have a wine tasting evening mixer with lots of hors d'oeuvres and award winning wines from all around the states 40+ bonded wineries. On Saturday they finish off with a Gala Wine Dinner and Awards program. The evening functions are optional and cost extra of course.
The conference opened on Friday with a full morning of marketing and communications speakers with talks on:
Marketing for Small Wineries, the US Wine Market, How it is changing and how you can Position Yourself for the Changes. Retail Marketing Tasting Room Design. Public Relations for Small Wineries, and finally Consumer Preferences.
These presentations were all fantastic. Marketing is something that is usually the last thing a winery thinks about and it really should be the first thing. How are you going to position yourself to be different and stand out from the crowd? Just making good wine is not enough these days! You need to talk to their hearts, not their heads. Sell them an experience, not a beverage in a bottle!
Friday afternoons sessions broke out into parallel tracks. One on Fermentation Management an the other on Vineyard Establishment. Unfortunately I could not clone myself fast enough but both sessions were fantastic and I ended up splitting my time a little in both sessions.
The final afternoon session was a Viticulture Roundtable and discussion of some possible new varieties that may perform well in New Mexico. We tasted several reds and whites that were planted several years ago and produced enough crop to make some test wines. Interestingly enough the whites were ones that do well in the colder regions of Europe (Germany). The reds were mostly warm region Italian varietals.
Saturdays opening session began with an update on the current state of the NM Wine and Grape Industry. How the state is still trying to recover from the severe cold snap of last February (2011) when we had 3 days of record cold (from North to South) followed up by late hard freezes in April and early May. Total crop production for last year was only 35% of normal! Acres and acres of grape vines were lost. Vines that were not rooted on root stock (cuttings) actually faired better than grafted. The cuttings were able to come back from the roots and immediately start to grow that same year but the grafted vines of course all had to be dug up and replaced, one by one, a much more time consuming (and expensive) problem.
From there we had several interesting talks on Soil Health and Soil Fertility in Viticulture.
We then broke into parallel tracks again. One track was on Amateur Winemaking Essentials and Common Winemaking Mistakes.
The other was on pH Management in Wine from Alkaline Soils and Temperature, Managing Skin Contact in High pH Fruit, Temperature Mangement in Primary Fermentation as well as MLF. I chose the pH management of course and it was fantastic. Some of the most informational packed talks were those by Shea Comfort. Shea was the winemaker for More Wine for a number of years and authored everyone of those fantastic articles that are available for free download from More Wine still (such as the Red and White Wine Making Guides) He is now in the freelance winemaker consulting business Yeast Whisperer. These sessions were worth the price of admission alone.
The final afternoon session was a fun round of blind tastings of award winning wines from around the state. We tasted one by one, discussed flavor profiles, mouthfeel, finish and then the wine was revealed. Fun all the way around.
We had a much expanded group of Exhibitors this year including:
Double A Vineyards
Scott Labs
Tanks For Wine (flextanks)
Criveller Group (large winery equipment crusher/destemmers, tanks, pumps)
Amorim Cork
Ganau Cork
All American Containers (bottles with some really neat ones I had not seen before)
Stixon Labels
Here are a few snaps I took.
This was my second year attending the conference. If your state has something similar I highly recommend attending. This conference has something for both the amateur winemaker as well as commercial wineries and vineyards. The cost was a very reasonable $150 for the two days which included continental breakfast as well as lunch and afternoon breaks on both days. They also have a wine tasting evening mixer with lots of hors d'oeuvres and award winning wines from all around the states 40+ bonded wineries. On Saturday they finish off with a Gala Wine Dinner and Awards program. The evening functions are optional and cost extra of course.
The conference opened on Friday with a full morning of marketing and communications speakers with talks on:
Marketing for Small Wineries, the US Wine Market, How it is changing and how you can Position Yourself for the Changes. Retail Marketing Tasting Room Design. Public Relations for Small Wineries, and finally Consumer Preferences.
These presentations were all fantastic. Marketing is something that is usually the last thing a winery thinks about and it really should be the first thing. How are you going to position yourself to be different and stand out from the crowd? Just making good wine is not enough these days! You need to talk to their hearts, not their heads. Sell them an experience, not a beverage in a bottle!
Friday afternoons sessions broke out into parallel tracks. One on Fermentation Management an the other on Vineyard Establishment. Unfortunately I could not clone myself fast enough but both sessions were fantastic and I ended up splitting my time a little in both sessions.
The final afternoon session was a Viticulture Roundtable and discussion of some possible new varieties that may perform well in New Mexico. We tasted several reds and whites that were planted several years ago and produced enough crop to make some test wines. Interestingly enough the whites were ones that do well in the colder regions of Europe (Germany). The reds were mostly warm region Italian varietals.
Saturdays opening session began with an update on the current state of the NM Wine and Grape Industry. How the state is still trying to recover from the severe cold snap of last February (2011) when we had 3 days of record cold (from North to South) followed up by late hard freezes in April and early May. Total crop production for last year was only 35% of normal! Acres and acres of grape vines were lost. Vines that were not rooted on root stock (cuttings) actually faired better than grafted. The cuttings were able to come back from the roots and immediately start to grow that same year but the grafted vines of course all had to be dug up and replaced, one by one, a much more time consuming (and expensive) problem.
From there we had several interesting talks on Soil Health and Soil Fertility in Viticulture.
We then broke into parallel tracks again. One track was on Amateur Winemaking Essentials and Common Winemaking Mistakes.
The other was on pH Management in Wine from Alkaline Soils and Temperature, Managing Skin Contact in High pH Fruit, Temperature Mangement in Primary Fermentation as well as MLF. I chose the pH management of course and it was fantastic. Some of the most informational packed talks were those by Shea Comfort. Shea was the winemaker for More Wine for a number of years and authored everyone of those fantastic articles that are available for free download from More Wine still (such as the Red and White Wine Making Guides) He is now in the freelance winemaker consulting business Yeast Whisperer. These sessions were worth the price of admission alone.
The final afternoon session was a fun round of blind tastings of award winning wines from around the state. We tasted one by one, discussed flavor profiles, mouthfeel, finish and then the wine was revealed. Fun all the way around.
We had a much expanded group of Exhibitors this year including:
Double A Vineyards
Scott Labs
Tanks For Wine (flextanks)
Criveller Group (large winery equipment crusher/destemmers, tanks, pumps)
Amorim Cork
Ganau Cork
All American Containers (bottles with some really neat ones I had not seen before)
Stixon Labels
Here are a few snaps I took.
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