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Ladies' first: Gruet Winery appoints first female winemaker
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Gruet Winery is popping the cork in celebration of its first female winemaker.
Carrie Gurule, a native New Mexican, was recently appointed as the winery鈥檚 head winemaker. Gurule joined the Gruet team in 2016 as a part-time consultant.
鈥淚 was helping with quality assurance,鈥� she said. 鈥淎nd I was super excited because I hadn鈥檛 really dealt with sparkling wine before. And doing the French traditional method just sounded so attractive to me.鈥�
Ladies' first: Gruet Winery appoints first female winemaker
Gruet prides itself in creating high quality M茅thode Champenoise sparkling wines. Gurule trained under previous head winemakers Laurent Gruet and Cyril Tanazacq during their time at Gruet.
鈥淚 started with the quality assurance and then that kind of just evolved into the laboratory analysis,鈥� Gurule said. 鈥淎nd so I did that here for quite some time. Somehow in there, we snuck in a safety chapter too, which is just fine. I love getting the team together and going over everything and all things safety.鈥�
She later became an assistant winemaker and was in that position for a couple of years before being recently promoted to head winemaker.
鈥淚 just couldn鈥檛 be more grateful for this opportunity to continue the Gruet name and continue making incredible sparkling wine here in our state of New Mexico,鈥� Gurule said. 鈥淎nd being homegrown, and continuing the tradition of something homegrown as well, it just means that my heart is overflowing.鈥�
With Gurule coming on board, there will be some new products that she will bring to the table, as well as continue creating Gruet staples.
鈥淲e鈥檙e going to start creating all these new things and what we鈥檙e focused on right now is continuing with the preciseness and the consistency that is Gruet Winery for over the past 30 approaching almost 35 years here. So at the moment, I鈥檓 so excited to be working with our team to continue the excellence here at the winery.鈥�
New products include the expansion of its core offerings with two Le Spritz ready-to-drink wine cocktails. Le Fleuriste infuses elderflower, sun-ripened lemons, honey, wild roses and spearmint. L鈥橭rangerie pays homage to the classic Aperol Spritz. It features Chinotto Orange, grapefruit extract, herbaceous bitters and natural botanicals.
Le Spritz has no artificial flavors, has 50% less sugar than most spritz cocktails, and is naturally gluten-free. It will be released at the end of April and available at Gruet鈥檚 Albuquerque and Santa Fe tasting rooms. More information can be found at .
