by Sarah Mock on
STEPPING INTO THE tasting room at Embudo Valley Vineyards, in Rinconada, is like walking into a friend’s party on a Friday night: The rooms are full, someone’s strumming a guitar, and the wine is flowing.
“Start with the Staurolite,” head winemaker Katie Hagan recommends. “It tastes like a riesling and a sauvignon blanc had a baby.” She pours me a splash (then later, a glass) of a satiny white wine that’s slightly sweet on the tip of my tongue before filling my mouth with mellow fruit flavors and a scent reminiscent of sitting beneath a blooming apricot tree.
This wine is named for the staurolite mineral, a rare and unusual stone that can be found not far from the Embudo Valley vineyards themselves. These vines are part of a long tradition, as farmers have been growing wine grapes along the banks of the Río Grande throughout New Mexico for more than 400 years, making it the oldest wine region in the United States.
But despite the regional legacy, the wines at Embudo—from their approachable flavors to their artsy labels—don’t feel very traditional. And that, Hagan says, is intentional.
“I’m trying to bridge the gap between old-world wine and natural wine,” she explains, highlighting her mission to marry old-school traditions with the natural wine essentials of local organic grapes, fermentation with wild yeast rather than commercial additives, and small-batch, minimal intervention techniques. For Hagan, combining the ancient and modern with her intuitive flair is the perfect recipe for making fun and inimitable wines.
Inside the lively tasting room, sampling the seven wines in their current collection feels like experiencing the future of northern New Mexico wine in real time. The zesty snap of Staurolite gives way to the desert-rain boldness of Opiñons, then to a decadent full-bodied red that has me thinking the wine’s name—Yes, Dear—as I’m poured another glass. Each offers something distinct and unexpected.
It all starts with the grapes. After years in Oklahoma City, owner John McMullin returned to his family’s Embudo Valley farm in 1989 and began growing heirloom beans and raising organic turkeys. At the same time, he tended some old baco noir vines on the property, crushing the grapes to make a few bottles of wine each year for family and friends. Then, in 2019, McMullin decided to wind down the turkey operation and refocus on the organic vineyard.
“With the turkeys, we created this niche from Taos to Albuquerque, where people just loved them,” McMullin says. “That was my same vision for the winery. I wanted to find a niche where the wine just sold itself.”
After a few years experimenting with a more traditional winemaking style, McMullin was still looking for the right approach when he met Hagan, who’d spent those same years apprenticing and winning awards at La Chiripada Winery, in Dixon. In 2024, Hagan was seeking a new challenge and was intrigued—if a bit hesitant—about the opportunity to help remake Embudo Valley Vineyards.
“They gave me basically full autonomy to create something new and different,” she says. “They wanted a full rebrand, basically to dissolve it and start over.” Although she knew this would be a huge task, it was too creatively tempting to pass up. She agreed to join the team, becoming one of the youngest female head winemakers in New Mexico.
Today, the Embudo Valley vines sit on the far side of the farm’s rickety bridge, which gives its name to a medium-bodied red in the vineyard’s current collection. The neat rows of gnarly vines are nestled between sage-spotted hills and cottonwood trees. Hagan spends plenty of time on the farm when she’s not making wine, helping plant nearly 1,200 new vines in 2025, and adding six new varieties that will contribute to future wines. In the meantime, the vineyard also sources grapes from other farms, including vineyards in southern New Mexico and near Abiquiú.
After crushing the just-right blend of grapes, Hagan pairs it with the perfect fermentation vessel. When she is making her collection’s light red County Line or her quirky orange wine, Opiñons, that means a 1,000-pound terra-cotta jar called an amphora. Orange wines, which are made from white grapes that are fermented with their skins and seeds, have been made in these amphorae in what is now the country of Georgia for nearly 5,000 years. The dry but rich amber-colored wine has many of the benefits of barrel fermentation, which adds deep flavors and complex texture to the wine but without imparting the oaky flavor and tannins.
To these massive clay pots, she adds the juice from her orange blend, which includes rkatsiteli, an ancient Georgian variety, and the only other ingredient—wild yeast that lives naturally in the air and on the grapes’ skin. Using this ambient yeast, rather than driving fermentation with commercial yeasts, is a centuries-old method, but it tends to make the process less precise.
“It’s very risky,” Hagan acknowledges. “Most people think I’m insane for doing it.” Although using wild yeast requires a much more hands-on approach to the fermentation process, she sees it as a path to achieving a flavor that no one can replicate and a taste that can only come from northern New Mexico.
“Using wild yeast in our fermentation means there’s an influence from the Embudo area that a lot of other wines made here don’t have,” Hagan says, adding that the character comes from the more dynamically flavorful high-elevation grapes and the unique Río Grande water, which she says gives the wines a minerality and earthy flavor.
While sometimes that impossible-to-replicate local flavor comes from careful crafting and observation, other times it happens by chance. Hagan laughs as she talks about her “Bob Ross wine,” an affectionate nickname for the “happy accident” that brought a blend of white grapes together with pear wine to create her Carpe Mañana rosé. “Winemaking is really an artistic expression for me,” she says. This ethos shines through in the collage-art labels on the bottles, designed by Taos-based artist Mira Betz, and in the wines’ tongue-in-cheek names—little details that help express Hagan’s unpretentious vision for the winery overall.
But she’s not satisfied with only making wines for wine aficionados. Looking to the future, she’s thinking about young people like herself. “One day, life is going to hit them, and they’re going to need a drink,” she says. “When that happens, I want them to feel like there’s a place for them in the wine world.” As she glances around the boisterous crowd in the tasting room, she adds, “It’s about community.”
Writer Sarah Mock recommends asking Embudo Valley Vineyards tasting room manager Gabriel Roddy, a world-class sommelier, for suggestions in pairing Embudo Valley wines with all kinds of New Mexican favorites.
BRAISED LEEKS WITH TALEGGIO CREAM SAUCE