Unique People and Really Great Wine 

Northern New Mexico is home to a particular breed of people.  Artists here are inspired by and make their living by using materials from the land.  And how could those materials and the surrounding landscape not inspire you?  In Placitas, a small community just north of Albuquerque, you’re surrounded by stunning black mesas to the northwest, the Sandia Mountains to the east and vast deserts towards the south.  It has the most spectacular sunsets I’ve ever witnessed – shades of pink and purple I didn’t think existed until I saw the sky painted with them.  One understands why Georgia O’Keefe made this place her home.  The artist Nicolai Fechin, a Russian émigré in mid 1920’s, called Taos his home and his art reflected the people and the scenery that surrounded him.  Even D.H. Lawrence bought a ranch here that was to be the only home he ever owned. He wrote "New Mexico was the greatest experience from the outside world that I have ever had... a new part of the soul woke up suddenly, and the old world gave way to a new."

Jim Fish is one of those unique individuals you come across in northern New Mexico.  A former chemical engineer for Sandia National Laboratory, he gave all that up to pursue his passion for wine making.  Jim doesn’t make just any old grape wine.  This is a man of the land, of the southwest, a man who only takes what he absolutely needs and fashions fantastic things out of that.  Anasazi Fields Winery was born in 1993 and opened to the public in 1995, named for the prehistoric tribe of Native Americans that lived in this region up until around 1200 CE.  Long before Jim, the Anasazi themselves farmed these valleys and left behind petroglyphs to mark their stay.  Jim uses these markings as an insignia on his wine labels.

When he talks about his wine, you can see that glint in his eye – a testament that he loves what he does.  He uses fruits native to the valley for his wines like the Choke Cherry, Plum, Apricot and even the ubiquitous Prickly Pear Cactus.  He describes his Choke Cherry creation as “a wonderful piece of New Mexico.”  The fruit wines are atypical.  They are dry and not overly sweet with a spiciness that lingers on your tongue.

As we walk through his Placitas winery, he tells us that the fruit he doesn’t grow himself he gets from local growers.  A couple in Taos brings him Choke Cherries they pick in the mountains every year and sometimes growers trade crops for wine instead of cash.  “It’s a nice little local commerce we’ve got going here…” he tells us.  He stresses the importance of supporting the local economy so they don’t lose out to development, which is slowly encroaching from the neighboring town of Bernalillo.  This tree-thick valley could quickly become another subdivision if the farmers here are not supported.  And it would be a shame considering the inspiration one can draw from the scenery, as Jim does.

Not only does Jim create an amazing assortment of delicious wines, but he also sculpts and writes.  His wood sculptures fill every nook and cranny in the winery.  He fashions them out of pieces of apricot or peach wood.  He makes necklaces out of grape vines.  In the center of the winery, where monthly poetry readings are held, stands a piece of elm tree trunk just taller than me.  At first glance, it looks alive.  It’s turned on end with a fray of roots waving in the air.  It looks like a woman; the willowy roots are the hair being blown by a non-existent wind, the two branches that once held leaves, are now legs.  It’s quite beautiful and yet eerie at the same time that something so familiar as a woman’s body can be found in the trunk of a discarded elm.  But Jim sees them and finds a way to pull them out.     

He might seem part “mad scientist” when he starts talking about alcohol percentages and sugar levels that go into making the perfect dry fruit wine.  But at heart he’s a real renaissance man – a local land activist, wine enthusiast, poet and artist.