Welcome to the seasonal newsletter from your friends at Last Ditch, your convivial wine growing collective based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We’re excited you’re here.

Our season kicks off with a Grapevine Pruning Workshop + Work Party on Sunday, March 29th from 9:30a-1:00p at La Cienega Vineyard, 20 minutes south of Santa Fe.

We LOVE pruning season and are excited to invite you into the vineyard. The 2.5 hour workshop will include some local and natural history, grapevine biology, shared observations about the season, and hands-on pruning work in the vineyard. Around noon, we’ll gather around a communal table to share wine from the vineyard along with a vegetarian, gluten-free lunch.

See details and register here.

We’re also hosting a Sparkling Hybrid Wine Tasting Circle on Monday, April 13th from 6:00-7:30pm in downtown Santa Fe. Curious about hybrid wines but haven’t yet had a chance to try them? Join us around our table where we will get to know some varietals you’ve likely never tasted: Brianna, Somerset, St. Criox, Cayuga, and others.

See details and register here.

Is always the first question someone asks me when I tell them I’m a winegrower. For those of you who have asked, you know I have a lot to share about this topic. And I’m grateful more people are getting excited about hybrid grapes and wine.

Thankfully for us, our friend Joe Scala answers this question beautifully in this month’s Edible New Mexico in a piece titled History and Hybridity: The Case for Hybrid Grapes in New Mexico. We’ll post the link as soon as it hits the internet.

The article’s cover photo is from one of our 2024 harvest parties and includes hot pull quotes and cameos from various friends, along with our very own Tom Dixon. 🍇

Curious to know more? Check out Eric Asimov’s Can Hybrid Grapes Solve the Climate Change Dilemma for Wine Makers? We’ll be tasting wares from a few winemakers featured in the article at our April tasting workshop.

Or, if you have time to drop everything and read a 50-page report on why certain hybrid grapes were outcast in 1930s in Europe and remain illegal, we recommend this 2015 banger from Arche Noah: Forbidden Fruits.

The Children’s Atlas of Wine: What’s a hybrid? is a fast read and a more approachable overview of the natural and social history of what we’ll be pouring into your lunchtime glass when you join us for that pruning workshop. 🫠

In April, peek into the dandelion understory and you might find a Calligrapha dislocata enjoying a lunch of leaves. Beetle still my heart. 🪲

Hit reply and tell us: Are you drinking anything you love? Reading any good books? Dreaming about a world full of sparkling hybrid wines? Reply with your notes, questions, rants, NSFW emojis: we’re here for it. Holler at ya ditch! 🤗

ALSO! Do you know someone who might be interested in learning more about farming grapes and making wine? We’d love for you to forward them this newsletter.

XOXO,
Last Ditch