🍇 First harvest starts Aug 15 — four weekends of picking, lunch provided, a bottle of the first vintage per day you pick. RSVP →
Pajarito Farms
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Rows of young vines and the winery barn under a sunset sky at Pajarito Vineyards

The Vineyard

3.5 acres of decisions.

A working vineyard

Pajarito Vineyards sits in Albuquerque, New Mexico — roughly 3,500 vines across 3.5 acres, primarily wine grapes, with lavender on the property and room reserved for expansion.

The vineyard wasn't planted in one heroic weekend. It went in over multiple seasons, and that's been an advantage: every planting taught us something about spacing, trellising, rootstock, irrigation, and variety selection, and the next planting got the benefit. Decisions here are based on what actually happens in the field — not on what a textbook written for another climate says should happen.

As the vineyard grows, so does the machinery. We're steadily working toward more mechanization — the goal is a vineyard a small crew can farm well, without cutting corners on the work that has to be done by hand.

≈3,500 vines3.5 acres8 varietiesDrip irrigatedLavenderRoom to grow
Young vines on drip irrigation at Pajarito Vineyards
Young vines on drip — nothing grows here without water on purpose.
Freshly trenched vine rows during irrigation work
Trenching in the rows — infrastructure first, romance later.

Farming at high desert

Wine grapes have grown in the middle Rio Grande valley since Spanish missionaries planted the first vines near Socorro by 1629, and by 1880 the New Mexico territory ranked fifth in the nation in wine production. This climate has been proving itself for almost 400 years — our job is to farm it well, not to reinvent it. These are the four facts that shape almost every decision on this property:

Intense sun

Ripening is rarely the problem. Restraint is.

Irrigation required

Rainfall doesn't farm this valley. Drip lines do.

Spring freezes

Frost after bud break can take a season. We fight back with smudge pots.

Diurnal swings

Hot days, cool nights — hard on planning, good for acidity.

The year in the rows

Five seasons of work

  1. Winter sunset blazing over the dormant vineyard
    01

    Dormancy & pruning

    Winter

    Every vine gets cut back to the wood that will carry the year. Pruning decisions made in the cold set the crop months before the first leaf.

  2. New green shoots emerging on young vines in spring
    02

    Bud break

    Spring

    The most nervous weeks of the year. New shoots emerge — and every clear, still night is a freeze-risk calculation.

  3. Full summer canopy down a vine row
    03

    Canopy growth

    Late spring – summer

    Rows fill in fast under desert sun. Shoot positioning, wire lifts, and irrigation management are the daily work.

  4. Grape cluster mid-veraison, turning from green to purple
    04

    Veraison

    Mid–late summer

    Berries soften and color. From here, it's acid and sugar curves — and the countdown to picking decisions.

  5. Harvest bins full of dark grapes in the truck bed
    05

    Harvest

    Late summer – fall

    Picking starts at first light while the fruit is cool. Small lots, variety by variety, each at its own moment.

Planting the final vine of our first year of planting, beside a trellis post
The final vine of our first year of planting — every vine here went into the ground by hand.
Tractor and spreader in the vineyard at a fiery sunset
The workday doesn't always end before the light does.
What we growField notes in the journal