Back in the sum­mer of 2010, the New York Times printed an arti­cle expos­ing Gruet Win­ery to the world at large. Or at least, the arti­cle exposed the win­ery to peo­ple who didn’t already know the truth about Gruet: their sparkling wines are amaz­ing. And amaz­ingly inex­pen­sive, depend­ing on what you get.

You can find Gruet (pro­nounced “groo-AY” if you took Span­ish in high school like the rest of us) wines all over New Mex­ico, from the upscale restau­rant to the gro­cery store on the cor­ner, because we as a State are so eff­ing proud of the win­ery. Most New Mex­i­can pro­duc­ers put out some pretty sweet stuff, because that’s what we tend to like around here. But the Gruet fam­ily has stuck to their French roots, and are pro­duc­ing well-made, (com­par­a­tively) dry wines that any­one can enjoy, from the New Mex­i­can who prefers white Zin­fan­del to any snob who hap­pens to read the NY Times.

Gruet makes their famous sparkling wines in the “méth­ode cham­p­enoise” (Cham­pagne style) and labels the bot­tles as such. This is an impor­tant dis­tinc­tion from label­ing it “cham­pagne,” because France has out­lawed call­ing any­thing Cham­pagne that isn’t from the Cham­pagne region of France. Thus Gruet’s mak­ing a charm­ing, very French point of pay­ing homage to their home­land. If you want to appear in the know, we’d sug­gest you refrain from call­ing it “cham­pagne,” too, although this is cer­tainly an accept­able Amer­i­can mis­take in many cir­cles. (If you think this is a silly French dis­tinc­tion, just remem­ber how ticked off New Mex­i­cans get when we learn the green chile on our bur­rito isn’t from Hatch.)

The somewhat-hidden-yet-fabulous tast­ing room on ABQ’s north­side pro­vides flights in what­ever price range you need, from the reserve bot­tles to the stuff you can get at Albertson’s. Their Blanc de Noirs gets high acco­lades, and their sparkling rosé is a connoisseur’s favorite. Don’t for­get that they make other wine, too; their chardon­nay is par­tic­u­larly nice.

The tast­ing room is also avail­able for pri­vate par­ties, should you want to, say, have your wed­ding recep­tion there. It’d def­i­nitely make for a shorter trip for all those cases of Gruet champa – excuse us, we mean “sparkling wine” – you’ll be serv­ing at the reception.