Enjoying the fruits of your labor — if you have the labor

In the span of a little more than a decade in the late 1800s, New Mexico went from producing 16,000 gallons of wine to producing nearly 1 million gallons of wine, making the state fifth in the nation for wine production.

Today, New Mexico doesn’t even rank in the top 10 wine-producing states. But, with new technology developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, farmers are hopeful grape harvesting and wine production in New Mexico could come to the forefront again.

Annually, New Mexico produces about 1 million cases of wine, which equates to 2.4 million gallons, said Christopher Goblet, executive director of New Mexico Wine, via email. He said most of that comes from Gruet and Lescombes wineries.

“This is relatively small in comparison to the West Coast, Texas, New York and North Carolina, but it is average for most of the emerging winemaking states,” he said.

Like others in the agriculture sector, a major barrier to the wine industry is a lack of hands to pick grapes. There just aren’t enough people signing up to do the work.

So farmers have turned to machines.

Noisy Water Winery is a family of fifth-generation farmers. The company is based in Ruidoso but has vineyards all over New Mexico. It’s one of the few wineries in New Mexico that owns a mechanical harvester.

Jasper Riddle, president of Noisy Water Winery, said his company got the machine during the pandemic, when he couldn’t find enough workers to pick grapes.

“It would take hundreds of people, physically, hundreds of people to do what these machines can do in a single night,” he said.

Noisy Water Winery got the harvester from Pellenc, a European-based machine industry company that has a subsidiary in California.

Last week, Riddle’s company had the machine running at the Pueblo of Santa Ana’s Tamaya Vineyard. Riddle estimated the machine would harvest 100 to 120 tons of grapes in about three days at the vineyard, which the Pueblo sends off to Gruet Winery.

As the sun set in the distance and clouds gathered to pour rain in the west, the crew got the machine running. A loud rumble one wouldn’t expect to hear in a vineyard spread across the field as the harvester ran over a row of grapes, aggressively shaking the vines to get the grapes off for collection.

A few people followed behind the harvester to handpick the grapes it missed, crops that were either too high or too low for the machine to reach. The crews continued into the early morning doing the work.

“We have a grape picker, but we’re still out here handpicking,” said Ryan Garcia with a laugh, as he harvested leftover clumps by hand.

Garcia is the director of agriculture enterprises for Santa Ana Pueblo. He said the Pueblo has pulled in companies with mechanized harvesters from other states to do the work in recent years but was able to connect with Noisy Water to do the work this year.

Jasper’s local company was willing to work with the Pueblo to ensure the machine harvests as many grapes as possible in a safe way, Garcia said, which some out-of-state companies haven’t done.

“He's working with us to run it a little bit slower than normal, but that's just to make sure that they don't damage the vines and then to get as much fruit as they can,” Garcia said.

Richard Piedmont, on the ground at Santa Ana Pueblo running the Pellenc harvester last week, said the machine can damage the vines, taking decades off their lifespans. But it’s what farmers have to do with the lack of labor available, he said.

It took four people last week to run the harvester at the Pueblo: One person driving the large machine, another standing on the back of the harvester, one person directing the harvester on how to move forward among the rows of grapes and Piedmont overseeing the whole operation.

The harvester was actually broken initially, and the Pueblo started its harvest a couple of days later than planned. Garcia said Noisy Water had to fly a contractor out from Arizona to calibrate the machine.

Riddle said a mechanical harvest is difficult in a place like New Mexico because there are so few companies using the machine and no experts in the state who know how to work on and repair the machine.

“You're just kind of on an island when things like this happen,” Riddle said.

The Pueblo hand harvested the grapes for a couple of years initially at the vineyards, but moved to the machine harvester because of how much more efficient — both in terms of cost and labor — it is.

“It’s an expensive piece of equipment. But if we were to spend that amount on labor with the crew that we have, it would take us weeks,” he added.

Garcia said even with the harvester, labor is still a barrier. He said the Pueblo still needs to find people to run the machine and irrigate the fields.

“It's so difficult,” he said. “People just don't want to work, it seems like, especially out in the sun, outside. They don't want to do that.”

Goblet said premium grapes are still best when hand-picked, and Riddle agreed.

“If it were up to winemakers, … they would love to have hand-harvested fruit,” Riddle said. “But unfortunately, it's not the reality anymore.”

Garcia said Santa Ana Pueblo’s vineyard wasn’t planted for mechanized harvest, but there’s luckily enough space that it still works out.

Newer farms are being planted with mechanized harvest in mind. Goblet said old farms weren’t planted with room for machinery, but new farms have more proper row spacing for a mechanized harvest.

“It certainly is going to be more prevalent moving forward,” he said.

Trying to make a profit at all

Garcia said the Pueblo has been growing grapes for around a decade. It’s not a huge moneymaker by any means, he said.

“Just like anywhere in America, farmers don't make a lot of money,” he said. “We're not getting rich on this.”

The Pueblo aims for a positive profit of about 15%, Garcia said. He said the Pueblo makes around $1,800 per ton, compared to an annual cost of about $15,000 per acre.

With a production goal of 140 tons in this year’s harvest, the Pueblo would earn $252,000. The cost to farm 28 acres adds up to at least $420,000 a year.

Garcia said Gruet also pays a premium for high quality grapes, though that rarely happens.

But the hardship doesn’t stop Santa Ana Pueblo from persisting.

“The passion and the value that the tribe puts into their people and their land is very strong,” said Garcia, who is Navajo.

Santa Ana Pueblo Gov. Myron Armijo said the vineyard has come a long way since it started 10 years ago, and he said he's very proud of it.

"It's a very good component to our economic development," he said.

The vineyard took a heavy hit during the COVID-19 pandemic. Garcia said a lot of staff left, and the crops suffered as a result.

“I'm just glad that they didn't let any of the vines die. They kept them alive,” he said.

Vineyard manager Walter Dods said a lot of infrastructure issues also came up then, like a broken irrigation system and supply lines. Someone stole equipment a few years back, he added. Dods said a lot of time this year was spent fixing those issues.

The extreme heat of the Southwest and droughts are tough on the crops, too, though the dry climate does prevent bugs and bacteria that come with rain from destroying the crops.

Dods said the Pueblo is recovering from its setbacks. He's optimistic about the future.

“We're excited to see what it's going to be at the end of the harvest,” he said.

Garcia said the Pueblo employs around seven workers on the vineyard year-round and about a dozen during the harvest.

He said he hopes to help improve harvests from about four tons per acre to five tons per acre.

Garcia said the Pueblo hopes to buy its own mechanical harvester in the next year or so.

He said there are also other expansion plans envisioned for the future, like adding more acreage and arranging tours of the vineyard and wine tasting for guests at the Tamaya resort and spa nearby.

“We’ve got big plans for this,” Garcia said, looking around the vineyard as he drove between rows in a four-wheeler.

“That’s the dream."