Cactus Champagne?

Gruetappeared
as some kind of anomaly when the silver or gold-labeled
bottles first spread along the East Coast in the 199Os.
Gruet, priced well below Napa and Sonoma sparklers, soon
caught a wave of enthusiasm. Today the winery, owned and run
by members of a Champagne family, consistently captures
awards at home and abroad, including many for its
increasingly intriguing portfolio of still wines.

The Gruet Winery
faces west along a major North/South frontage road parallel
to Route I-25 in Albuquerque. Behind the broad facade of
gray stone and glass stands a typically rustic oak tasting
room, with a cozy mirrored bar, round tables for four, walls
lined with framed awards – including a raft of them from
Jerry Mead’s International Competition, (Mead was an
original mentor), San Diego Wine Competition, and more – and
photos of the vineyards around Engle (three hours to the
south), and flute racks for sampling the wares. There’s
plenty of paraphernalia for sale: stacks of imprinted tee
and monogrammed sports shirts, branded bar items, souvenir
bric-a-brac, New Mexican food products, B.R. Cohn’s balsamic
vinegars, as well as plenty of bubbly, notably the 1997
Grand Reserve. Elsewhere around this city of half-a-million,
Gruet Grille and Gruet Steakhouse, the winery’s restaurant
affiliates co-owned by Laurent and Farid, are doing brisk
business and keeping the brand paired with the
wines.

“Gruet is a
wine-making family,” says winemaker Farid Himeur. “Gilbert
Gruet and his family began making Champagne in the village
of Bethon, south of Epernay, in 1952. Two of his children,
Laurent and Nathalie, and I decided to relocate to New
Mexico. Research started in 1983, and plantings in 1984. We
planted the first vineyards – the classic varietals of Pinot
Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier – and had our first
really good harvest in 1987. We released 8O,OOO cases in
2OO5, and will likely top 1OO,OOO this year.”

“We plant 5 to
1O acres each year. Whether we produce 1OO,OOO cases in the
coming year depends on the crop. Our worst enemy in New
Mexico is spring frost, and this year we’ve gotten past
that. Now we’re waiting for the flowering, and if it’s not
too windy, we’ll have a fine crop.” (We spoke mid-May: Farid
later reported that windy weather during flowering accounted
for losing about 2O% of the crop.)

MAKING
THE BUBBLY After
two years on tirage, vinifying and aging the wine according
to the Methode Champenoise rulebook, Gruet Brut made its
debut in 1989 to local enthusiasm and an even wider press.
Their typical blend for the Brut – 75% Chardonnay, 25% Pinot
Noir – may vary a percent or two. Their few acres of Pinot
Meunier all goes into the Blanc de Noir. Himeur explains:
“We don’t make Blanc de Blanc every year, only the best
ones, and that’s from a specific vineyard, and we limit
production to 1OOO cases.”

Still wines have
been a small but gradually increasing part of Gruet’s
business. “We made our first Chardonnay in 1991, about 1OOO
cases,” recalls Himeur. Today we’re up to 6OOO. Pinot Noir
is more recent, and in 2OO5 we made 15OO cases. We started
the Syrah program four years ago and have just made our
first vintage – only 3OO cases. We just released it and it
sold out instantly. We buy grapes from two growers in Deming
who raise Chardonnay and Pinot Noir to our specifications.”
Himeur tells me that still wines at present account for only
8% of Gruet’s production, but that that percentage has been
edging upwards, and is up now to 1O% so far in
2OO6.

Gruet is
enlarging its wine caves to keep up with its gradual
expansion. They’re digging into the hillside and beneath the
cellar floor where we stood. They converted their function
room into a barrel room where they barrel age the still
wines, retaining the low Gothic vaulting of groined arches
that resembles a church crypt.

Admirers of
Pinot Noir, both French and Californian, they have a
cellarful of empties from Rick Sanford (1989, 1992, 1993),
and Farid admits to being “a Burgundy guy”. He’s no admirer
of recent Californian styles that “are very heavy, thick,
very Syrah-like – these have nothing to do with Pinot Noir
as far as I’m concerned. If I wanted heavy wines, I’d buy
Zinfandels. Good Pinot Noir is light, delicate,
sexy.”

“We hand-pick
all the grapes and load twenty tons into each refrigerated
truck. The journey from Engle to here is 2 hours. We place
the bunches by hand uncrushed into the press. It takes 4 to
5 hours to extract the juice; we exert only 8OO grams of
pressure per 6O pounds, and up to 1 kilogram for the taille
[second press]. From one ton of grapes we take 12O
gallons, and the other 4O gallons goes into our second
label, Domaine St. Vincent, named for the patron saint of
winemakers.”

RIDDLE
ME NOT Advanced
technology in riddling cages has taken the handling of
bubbly a long way since the days of hand-racking.
Computerized programs tilt the huge wire cubes containing
5O4 bottles gently – 1/8 turn to the right, 1/8 to the left,
slightly forward, slightly back. The automated process
reduces racking time from 3 to 4 weeks to 4 to 5 days. “We
program differently for each batch,” explains Himeur,
“depending on its chemical composition (pH, acidity) and the
amount of yeast added. The great thing is that the quality
of the wine is not affected in the slightest by
automation.”

Himeur takes his
riddling seriously. While most of the riddling cages run on
a single computerized circuit, he keeps one smaller cage
apart, running on test programs. He has a batch of Rose
Reserve bottles, aged longer because they have more lees to
dislodge, on a program that moves the wines more steeply and
for a longer time. Sometimes there’s an issue with the
bottle manufacture – the inside wall of the bottle’s
shoulder slope on certain shipments, instead of being
perfectly smooth, may be somewhat nubbly, and thus restrict
the easy movement of the lees. (Gruet’s bottles are made in
Modesto, California. They are heavyweights, with 8mm glass
thickness. French bottles have an opening of 29 centimeters,
American bottles 26.)

When it comes
time for the dosage, the metal caps come off, the sugar
inserted (O.8 grams for all but the Demi-Sec, which is 2.2
grams), and the cork inserted.

Market
Position A chance
to talk to South East regional rep Tyler Young gave us his
ideas on Gruet’s expansion in the South. “We’re looking at
big projected growth in Miami, Georgia and, believe it or
not, New Orleans.” When asked what markets they’re trying to
crack, Himeur chuckles and says, “We sell in 48 states,
we’re missing only North Dakota and Mississippi.” How about
international? “We do a little bit of Japan, a little
Denmark and Germany, a little in the Caribbean.” As to
pricing, Himeur remarks: “When we first came out we wanted
to position ourselves at a dollar or two below Californian
sparkling wine. As time has gone on, they’ve edged upwards
while we have held fast to moderate prices.”

MARKETING
OPINIONS Howie
Rubin, owner of Bauer Wines on Newbury Street in Boston’s
Back Bay, echoes Himeur’s reflection. Rubin had this to say
about Gruet: “I’ve been selling it since it came into the
market ten years ago. It’s a good bang for the buck,
particularly regarding where California has gone with their
prices: all of them, like Domaine Chandon, are at least $2O,
Roederer Estate is great but it’s over $2O and Iron Horse is
$3O. It compares well with the better Cavas and Proseccos,
pricewise, at $15 to 17. Gruet does taste more
Champagne-like to me, with that French minerality. They’re
obviously dealing well with the desert heat issues. People
are hesitant to try it – like Westport, it’s a hand sell –
but once they do they come back and thank you.”

Ben, the wine
buyer at Joseph’s Table at the venerable La Fonda Hotel in
Taos, New Mexico, says: “We serve Gruet sparklers by the
glass and people love them. We sell mostly Brut, but some
Blanc de Noir, and occasionally Rose for special events,
like New Year’s Eve. We charge $8 for a 4-ounce flute. It’s
a great seller. Gruet is as close as we find to Champagne,
with that inkling of terroir. They’re making well-balanced
wines that are true competitors.”