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Jim Fish shares some of his thoughts on the wines produced at Anasazai Fields Winery. Our wines are quite unique. It is safe to say that there is not a commercial winery in the world making wines even close to our wines. Whole-fruit fermented, very dry, very intense, oak-aged (for up to 11 years and counting) fruit wines. And blends of these fruit wines and New Mexico grape wines. Unheard of. No category for them in the competitions. Unique. Blanco Seco, Rojo Seco and Obscuro Seco (our three grape-based blends) are easy drinking, every day type of dry table wines with some attitude transmitted via the pure fruit wines: 2000 New Mexico Apricot, 2002 Placitas Wild Cherry and 2004 New Mexico Blackberry, respectively. The pure fruit wines, the previously mentioned three and all of the rest, definitely have attitude. They beg for careful pairing with food and the proper state of mind. They take awhile to get to know. They can overwhelm with complexity. They may not be for every day. They are a sometimes-kind-of wine. SOMETIMES*Sometimes
you want something out of the ordinary * From A SENSE OF PLAY, the latest book of poems by the winemaker.
(The following details may apply to a vintage of this wine other than the one currently available.) New Mexico dry big berry table wine. Deep and dark side of red berry table wine. Whole fruit fermentation of fresh and ripe New Mexico wild cherries, blackberries and raspberries. Fermented together for over three months over the late summer and early fall of 2002. Take a sip of this wine, cool but definitely not cold, swish it around in the mouth and then swallow it slowly with lots of air. Get ready for an explosion of aromas and flavors of fresh and ripe New Mexico berries. With very little sugar that was not converted to the essential ingredient of wine. We only sell Midnight at the winery. Sometimes we take it to festivals and pour it in the Graduate Program. I wandered down into the library cellar earlier and came across a partial case of Lot 98-10, our apricot wine made from select Placitas apricots over the summer of 1998. The apricot wine that we are currently serving is Lot 00-01, from the summer of 2000. Also select Placitas apricots. I wondered how the 98 was doing. Have not tasted one in months, maybe a year. I decided to see where the 2000 might be going. What is left of the 98 has been in our library cellar, stored upside down, since we released the 2000, at least two years ago. The neck of the bottle I pulled up was about one third full of sediment. I sat the bottle upright for a few minutes to let the bigger chunks of sediment drift to the bottom. Only took a few minutes for the clarity to be acceptable to the vintner. I poured a small amount in a glass. Clarity quite acceptable. We called this particular wine, Placitas Gold New Mexico Apricot Wine. If you still have any of this wine in your cellar, I say open a bottle when you are in the mood for a treat. The burst of wild flowers starts with the nose, immediately, and stays with you all the way to the finish. This wine would go quite well with thin slices of sushi-grade tuna and slivers of toasted almonds. I think the 2000 is not going to the same place as the 98. Same general blend of select Placitas apricots, but a different summer with different weather. The wine has terriour. It captures temporal aspects of the landscape. I like where I think the 2000 is going. Slightly less in the nose and slightly more in the flavors. I also think that the 2000 is going to take three or four years to get to the same level as the 98 now. Finally, I expect the 98 to be gone before I have a chance to decide if the 2000 will ever catch the 98. 2002 PLACITAS PLUM (Sold out) Over a dozen varieties of plums from the historic village of Placitas A pure New Mexican wine. Six years on oak. A beautiful oakey smell. Pure plum, whole-fruit fermented – pits, skins and a few stems. What you find in the glass is unlike anything you have ever had. It is not a whiskey. It is not a port. It is a wine. It is a plum wine. Pure plum. Very dry. Mature. Unlike any plum wine you have ever had. A dry plum wine with lots of oak. Not one of those sweet plum wines. Not even close. The wine complements especially well curries and rich Italian dishes. It loves Mediterranean spices. Serve cool, but not chilled. It warms up and opens up nicely in the glass. Some may prefer to decant the wine to soften the finish a bit. Try swirling a quarter glass of this wine rather vigorously for a minute or two, pausing every 15 to 20 seconds to check out the changing nose. Now take a sip. Repeat until the glass is empty. We are doing whole-fruit fermentation. Whole-fruit fermentation gives not only this wine, but all of our wines, a distinct character. A distinct complexity. Lots going on. Very clear that the pits and the skins made some contributions. Back to the plum wine. It is a wine. A very unusual wine. Another grape wine with a twist. As a “hint of cherry” applies to a Syrah, a “hint of apricot” applies to a Chardonnay. I call our Blanco Seco: the red-wine-drinker’s white wine. As I said in the write up for Rojo Seco (see also): I love big red grape wines – the bigger the better. I almost never drink a white wine. I find that most well-made white wines try to sneak by you. Our Blanco Seco does not try to sneak by you. We have made two lots: one with a 2003 New Mexico Chardonnay and one with a 2004. With both we blended our 1997 New Mexico Apricot. Five percent apricot in the first lot and 15% apricot in the second lot. The 1997 Apricot (of which we still have several hundred gallons) is extremely intense. Think about dried apricot with no sugar saturated in dry sherry. The acid is powerful. The fruit is powerful. I marinate salmon in it. I serve the grilled salmon with the Blanco Seco. (I may sneak a few sips of the 1997 Apricot while I am grilling the salmon.) A fringe benefit of the Apricot wine is the fact that it serves to stabilize the Chardonnay to the point that the addition of sulfites before bottling is not necessary. Because of the slow, sugar-starved fermentation of the whole fruit, the wine is loaded with the complex organic acids found in the pits and skins. These acids, like those found in red wines fermented on the skins for a significant amount of time, are natural antioxidants and, hence, natural preservatives. Open a bottle of Blanco Seco and enjoy it over a few days. No need for sulfites. The apricot wine stabilizes the Chardonnay better than sulfites and it does not abandon the wine on opening. Those acids are still around several days later. They are just softer, more complex, more interesting. A serious Chardonnay drinker probably would not approve, but a lot of red-wine drinkers have become quite avid fans of our Blanco Seco.
The first batch of Rojo Seco we produced was in 2003. I love big red grape wines – the bigger the better. Deep aroma. Complex. Dry. Deep finish. I have a hard time finding a red wine that is big enough. Almost all of the red wines readily available have been intentionally toned down to a level for a broader appeal or to meet the standard expected by wine judges and wine critics. Anything in the wine lurking in the shadows is suspect. What is that? Must be a flaw. Never mind that it might be an asset in the proper wine and food pairing. At the various New Mexico wine festivals, I make a point, at some point, of tasting all of the dry reds at the festival. There are quite a few wonderful New Mexico reds. Especially those that the winemakers age for a few years. One year, at the Albuquerque wine festival, I had a glass of Syrah from Southern New Mexico. Syrahs are known to have a “hint of cherry.” In other words, a hint of cherry in a Syrah would not kick it out of a competition as hopelessly flawed. I took the glass of Syrah back to our booth where I had earlier been pouring samples off to the side to customers who seemed to be getting into our off the wall wines and to friends who happened by. One of the wines that I had under the table was our 1998 Placitas Wild Cherry. Dry. Complex. Intense. Produced by whole-fruit, sugar-starved fermentation of Placitas grown wild cherries. I splashed some of the Wild Cherry in the Syrah. Estimated at about 90% Syrah and 10% wild cherry. I tasted it, passed it around the booth, headed back to the booth where I got the Syrah, called out the winemaker, gave him a sample of the new blend and ordered a batch of the Syrah to be delivered to Anasazi Fields Winery. We have been making Rojo Seco ever since. The first lot was 2002 New Mexico Syrah and 1998 Placitas Wild Cherry. The second lot was 2003/2001, respectively. The third lot 2004/2001. The immediate success of Rojo Seco led to Blanco Seco. Aside: Because of the 11% Wild Cherry Wine in our Rojo Seco, we cannot enter the blend in a grape wine competition. Nor can we enter it in a fruit wine competition. I did, however, slip it into a competition as a generic red wine. Because I cheated, I cannot use the fact that it won a Silver Medal for purposes of promotion. One of the judges did comment on the “hint of cherry.” His mind refused to acknowledge that the cherry had rattled his teeth.
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