Welcome to Anasazi Fields Winery!

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Winery Hours

The winery is open for free tasting, free tours and wine sales:

Summer Hours
(April 20, 2017 through November 26, 2017):
Our tasting room will be open Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 5pm.

Winter Hours
(December 3, 2016 through April 16, 2017):
Our tasting room will be open on Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 4:30pm.

The winery is available by appointment at other times or for groups larger than 10 people
(505)867-3062 or email info@anasazifieldswinery.com

See our events page for a list of activities at the winery throughout the year.

ANASAZI FIELDS WINERY sits on the western edge of the old village of Placitas in the northern foothills of the Sandia Mountains, a scenic twenty minute drive north of Albuquerque. Orchards and vineyards surrounding the winery are watered by a spring-fed irrigation system that dates back over a thousand years to a time when the Anasazi people farmed the Placitas Valley. Nearby are petroglyphs which we have reproduced on our wine labels.

Vintner Jim Fish and his partners hand-craft dry table wines from locally-grown apricots, peaches, plums, wild cherries and other fruits. Unlike most "fruit wines", our wines are NOT SWEET dessert wines. Their delicious dryness makes them the perfect accompainment to any meal. We also produce one estate red grape wine, Synaesthesia; serveral blends of New Mexico grape wines with one of our old fruit wines, e.g., Rojo Seco, a blend of Syrah and wild cherry; and an off-dry Cranberry wine. See our wines page for a complete list of our unique and adventurous wines.

One of our primary goals is to help preserve the agricultural nature of the small villages of Northern New Mexico by producing excellent wines from the fruit grown here for centuries.

Featured Wine
Sangre de Puma
October 12,2016

There are two native cherries found in Northern New Mexico: chokecherries (prunusvirginiana) and bitter or wild cherry (prunusemarginata). For centuries, both have been used for homemade wine. A number of wineries in the U.S. make a chokecherry wine. As far as I know, Anasazi Fields is the only commercial winery in the world making a wine from 100% prunusemarginata.

I made my first batch of wild cherry wine in 1991, back in the hobby wine days, before the hobby got out of control. In fact, the wild cherry wine was a major factor in the hobby getting out of control. Early on, I realized that a big red-style table wine made from the wild cherries of Placitas could be special. I started locating groves around the village and asking permission to pick. Each year, the batch would be a little bigger than the year before. Furthermore, the wine kept getting better, with each batch, and each batch with age.

Our wild cherry wine, which we now call Sangre de Puma, is one of our signature wines. Most of the cherries for this wine come from our orchard, Wild Cherry Farm. We purchased the property in 1998 specifically because of an existing wild cherry grove. Since we have had the property, we have more than quadrupled the wild cherry production by transplanting seedlings from the original grove into old alfalfa fields and by allowing the original grove to expand.

This year, we started picking the wild cherries at the farm on June 18. By June 23, we had 200 pounds of cherries in the fermentation tank. We added 50 pounds of dextrose and inoculated it with yeast. We kept adding freshly picked cherries to the batch until the final picking on July 14, at which point we had a total of 1633 pounds of wild cherries. An additional 50 pounds of dextrose was added to the batch on June 30. On August 3, the alcohol level in the fermentation tank had reached 8.7%. Another 50 pounds of dextrose was added. On August 17, the alcohol was 10%. We added another 50 pounds of dextrose on that day and another 50 pounds on August 25. On September 7, Gerard tested the alcohol at 12.2%. On Monday, September 26, Shayla and I spent all day straining and pressing the fermented wild cherries. We got 150 gallons of beautiful Sangre de Puma. We sealed it up in a stainless steel tank with about a gallon of lightly toasted French oak chips. Success!

Fish Bits
THE GOOD LIFE