Tilting at Windmills: Los Alamos, New Mexico

There’s something kinda hidden about Los Alamos.  Over sixty years ago the greatest scientific minds were assembled here to work on the Manhattan project.  To this day Los Alamos has the National Lab and then there’s the Santa Fe Institute, a gathering of some of the greatest minds in the world that come together to try and figure out.. well..  everything.

What I am saying here is that there’s a lot of brain power in Northern New Mexico.  Sometimes, those great minds… they get bored.

The Ron is the head distiller for Don Quixote.  He first became interested in fermentation and distillation while a freshman in college.  He built his first still at the time which was quickly confiscated by campus police who didn’t believe his story that it was all for ‘reasearch purposes.’

On a trip to Ukraine, Ron met his wife, Olha.  She came from a proud distilling line.  Her father, a merchant marine couldn’t afford to pay his sailors so he offered them the best vodka and food as long as they sailed with him.

Ron’s engineering know how combined with Olha’s heritage and Don Quixote was born in the mountains of Northern New Mexico.

They have two locations in the area, one is Los Alamos and one outside Santa Fe. The downside is they only let you try five things at a time, which, given a really impressive selection is a bit torturous.  They had more then five… anything.  More then five red wines, more then five white wines and more then five liquors.  Hell, they have two grappas which I will get to later.  So I guess, what I am saying, there’s more to them then what I am about to say, but I really can’t say much.

Microdistillaries are a hard-to-find commodity in this world, so I stuck primarily with the spirits, although I did try a couple of the heavier reds.

Cabernet: The first thing I was told about their dry reds is that they were going to be sweeter then I was used to.  This was because the cuisine of the area tended on the spicy side.  Dry, peppery, oaky, these are great qualities in a red wine, but they just don’t go with the food in the area.  So, fair enough.

The cab had a port wine, raspberry and dark cherry aroma and I got a pretty much identical sensation in the flavor.  It was slightly sweeter then similar wines, but not overly so.  Dry red wines often leave a person wishing for a steak.  This is not the case here.  In a way the wine stands on its own.

Merlot: Very similar aroma to the cab.  I picked up a little more pepper on the palate and it was a little drier, but other then that I really couldn’t detect a huge difference between the two.

Okay enough with the wine.  It’s distillation time.

Bourbon: Made from blue corn and wheat.  Blue corn is used in a lot of cuisine here and has a slightly sweeter flavor.  I didn’t get that as much from the bourbon.  It was incredibly smooth, though.  There was some leathery, oaky notes.  It was slightly sweet but I don’t know if I could pick it out from any other high-quality bourbon.

Grappa: The story of grappa, as I was told, was that this was a peasant drink in old Italy.  As soon as the rich folk had used the grapes for their wines, the peasants would gather the rest, get what juice they could and distill it down.  They had two types at Don Quixote, aged and un-aged.  I went with the un-aged since I was told it wasn’t as sweet.  Light, semi neutral spirit.  I picked up some light port wine and cherry flavors along with a nice smooth character.

Gin: This was far and away my favorite.  Even those who consider gin, as one of my friends would put it, "pine trees and ass," would have to give this creation some props.  It’s made from blue corn again with New Mexico herbs and spices including juniper (of course) Pinon Chamisa Sage and lemons.  The result is this wonderful aroma like the desert after a rainstorm.  The astringent juniper berries are mellowed by the slightly spicy, slightly sweet concoction with just a hint of citrus in the back. Unlike the bourbon you can pick up quite a bit of the extra sweetness from the blue corn here.