Vivác Winery

Vivác is a Spanish term for a high-altitude refuge. In November 1998 brothers Jesse and Chris Padberg set out to make professionally crafted, world-ranked dry red wines, which was a first for New Mexico, and they did it on the family property in Dixon where they were born and raised, tucked into the foothills and surrounded by apple orchards. Their wives, Michele and Liliana, built the business around them.

The original winery was a 500 square foot Rastra-block room the brothers built themselves in 1999. There are now three estate vineyards inside a fifteen minute drive, each in a different microclimate. The Fire Vineyard went in first in 1999 at 6,200 feet, named for the day an eight-year-old Jesse and a six-year-old Chris set the field alight with fireworks. The 1725 Vineyard sits at 6,000 feet on land that once ran from the Barrancos Blancos, the white sandstone mountain on their label, down to the Angostura. The Abbott Vineyard, planted along the Rio Grande in 1989, sits at 5,800 feet and ripens the warmer-climate grapes.

Altitude is the whole problem and the whole point. A late spring freeze can still arrive after the vines have woken up, and when the temperature starts falling the brothers light fires around the perimeter in the middle of the night and stay out until it passes. Everything after that is hand work too. The vineyards are organically farmed, the fruit is sorted by hand, and Vivác is working with neighbouring growers to have the Northern Rio Grande Valley recognised as its own AVA.