Black Mesa Winery - Velarde, NM Pt. 3

We continue our conversation with Katherine Lautenbach. The Black Mesa is a mesa in Colorado, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. It's been known as a geological wonder of North America. With that award comes a lot of responsibility in the name Black Mesa Winery. Let's get into some of the wines that you produce.
Well, New Mexico food is sort of a blend between Native American food and Mexican food is the best way I can describe it. Obviously, the red and green chili's are big, here and everyone's got their own recipe for that. So if you went to one restaurant, it's going to have different red and green in the spice level is going to be different than in the restaurant down the street. So our wine is definitely made for that sort of pairing. They're not really heavy either. So you know, some of the Napa cabs can run up 16 percent and ours are really right in between 12 and 13 percent. Just because they're lower in alcohol and because of the area, they're going to be a little bit higher in acid. So they're going to be very friendly like this. The kind of heat would go with slightly sweeter, would go great with that spicy food. So we've got actually recipes on our website. If you look under wine cider and food pairings, we'll have the hard cider, the ones that go to the hard, hard cider, the white wine, and the red wine. We've got 15. And it's working with that same chef that we use with our virtual tastings as well. So she participates in that. You're not cooking food on the property, right? We don't. But the chef that I've been talking about, she makes these makes Merlot popsicles.