Arena Blanca Winery Tasting Room

The wine counter at Arena Blanca stands inside McGinn’s Country Store on U.S. 54/70, among candy, farm-made fudge, T-shirts, gift baskets, and a kids’ section of toys and books. A tasting costs nothing, but it begins with a photo ID. The house rule, as the farm prints it, is “We ID EVERYONE- No exceptions,” and vertical or expired cards are refused. A visitor who passes may sample up to four wines. Pistachios and candy are sampled free at the same store. The McGinns charge no entrance fee, and the farm tour is the only thing that requires a ticket.

Four pours at the counter

The wines are made on the farm, from grapes grown west of the store. The family names Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, Gewurztraminer, Chardonnay, and Merlot as most of its planting. Its best sellers include Pistachio Delight, Alamogordo Red, White Sands, La Luz Red, and a Pomegranate made from the fruit. The New Mexico Tourism Department’s listing names Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, White Zinfandel, and Pistachio Blush, and counts 18 different wines made on site.

The pistachios come roasted and salted, in red and green chile, and in what KOAT counted in 2022 as over a dozen flavors, “from bacon ranch to red chili.” Next to the wine and nuts, an ice cream parlor turns the farm’s crop into homemade pistachio ice cream. Its specials follow the calendar. For Cinco de Mayo 2026 it sold the Chaco, a waffle taco with pistachio ice cream and a chocolate hard shell, and Ice Cream Nachos, waffle chips with pineapple and coconut ice cream, Tajín, and chamoy sauce. Fresh-squeezed lemonade came in for the July heat. On August 24, 2026, a Prickly Pear flavor “made from real prickly pear cactus fruit” went on the board. Labor Day weekend brought back the Star Spangled Pistachio Ice Cream Taco. The farm serves no meals, but it keeps picnic tables for people who bring their own lunch, and its tour page suggests eating the ice cream outside, facing the mountains and the pistachio trees around the store.

Animals are welcome in the store. The farm’s list invites “your dog, cat, rabbit, ferret, iguana, parrot, or tropical fish,” so long as each is leashed, carried, or held. Pets can no longer ride the tour, for insurance reasons.

Stephanie Simpson, who wrote up the place in 2021 on her blog Stephwaxpoetic, described the building as a log cabin. She found a koi pond and “an unsettling mechanical cowboy” at the entrance, and a crowded interior of shoppers and souvenir stands. The McGinns run a second store at 37 Highway 82, at the Alamogordo city limit sign, beside what the family calls the Giant Alamogordo Landmark, a big “ALAMOGORDO” sign. The state lists an Arena Blanca tasting room at that address as well. In July 2026 the farm advertised samples of homemade fudge and a mountain-made Cherry Cider there.

Fourteen acres facing the white sands

The family farms 14 acres of wine grapes west of the country store. From the vines, in the McGinns’ words, there is a view “of the west mountains and White Sands - hence we named our winery: Arena Blanca (White Sands).” The New Mexico Tourism Department calls the arrangement “a true agricultural marriage,” a winery set inside a pistachio ranch.

Sheyenne Drake manages and cultivates the vineyard. She is an Alamogordo native, according to the farm’s 2024 profile of her. She earned a biology degree at New Mexico State University, with minors in chemistry and in genetics and biotechnology, and ran Division I cross country and track and field there. She completed a winemaking certification through the University of California at Davis and has traveled through Hermitage, Prosecco, and the Southern Rhône. She oversees the grape harvest and has had a hand in Pistachio Delight, Sweet Clarissa, White Sands, Cabernet Sauvignon, Sangiovese, and La Luz Red.

Between the rows of grapes and pistachios the farm plants crimson clover, okra, spring forage pea, and sorghum as cover crops. The McGinns say these build the soil and hold moisture, and they spread mulch brought from the surrounding mountain forest. They describe their crops as free from pesticides and engineered fertilizers. The open-air tour ride runs around the orchard and vineyard at the top of each hour from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. It lasts about 20 minutes and covers the family’s history along with how the nuts and wine are grown and made.

Tim McGinn told KOAT in 2022 that the trees are pollinated in April and harvested in July. In 2026 the farm posted “Shake. Shake. Shake. It’s harvest time!” on September 1. The figures for the orchard differ by source:

• The farm’s own page and the state’s main listing give 90 acres of pistachio trees.
• The state’s winery listing gives 94 acres.
• KOAT gives 95 acres.
• Visit Alamogordo and the farm’s tour page count 111 acres of orchard and vineyard together.

The tree count is put at over 12,000 by KOAT and Visit Alamogordo, and at over 12,500 by the state.

A farm from bare desert

The founder was Thomas Michael McGinn, born March 30, 1929, in Colón, Panama. According to his obituary in the Alamogordo Daily News, he was brought home on Easter Sunday, and his brother Charles named him “Bunny.” Everyone in Panama called him that from then on. He married Arden Landahl in 1953, and they had three sons: Chris, Sean, and Tim, the youngest, born in 1968. For United Fruit Company he worked in Guatemala, Colombia, and Honduras. He then went to California and worked for Thomas English Muffins, Cool Whip, and Johnson Pie Company. Simpson’s blog calls him a nut salesman. Arden died of cancer in 1972. He wrote four books, and his grave marker reads US AIR FORCE.

KOAT reports that the business began in 1980, after Thomas McGinn moved from the East Coast. His son said he had always dreamed of being a farmer. Visit Alamogordo says he started the orchard and vineyard “from bare desert land.” By Simpson’s account he planted his first pistachios in the Tularosa Basin about a decade after Heart of the Desert, which she identifies as the first pistachio grove in New Mexico. The two farms sit back to back off U.S. 54/70 North. She writes that many Alamogordo locals thought it in bad taste when McGinn’s set up beside its neighbor.

Tim McGinn described the early years to KOAT: “My job here was to chop weeds and to be a farm boy. I had to do that instead of playing sports in high school because it was needed. It was just my dad and I. He needed the help. This was his dream, and ultimately it became my life.” The store opened in 1995, Tim told Roadside America. Thomas McGinn died in Alamogordo on August 4, 2007, by his obituary; Visit Alamogordo gives the year as 2008. He is buried at Our Lady of the Light Catholic Cemetery in La Luz.

Thirty feet for a father

In 2008, according to the state tourism listing and Roadside America as cited by Simpson, Tim McGinn raised a 30-foot pistachio beside the highway. The family calls it the World’s Largest Pistachio. “It took us three or four months, and it’s beautiful,” he told KOAT. He said the idea came to him one night: “I thought of the big pistachio as an idea to build that and put a plaque under it, which sort of talks about my dad.” He told the Albuquerque Journal that he wanted a monument “that would represent his enormous passion for the creation of a pistachio farm in the bare desert.” Simpson adds that his father was said to have enjoyed old-timey roadside attractions.

Within weeks, Tim told Roadside America in 2009, a hundred people a day were pulling into the lot to take snapshots. “Had I known,” he said, “I would’ve built the Pistachio, then the store.” He was also reported to have called it the second most photographed attraction in New Mexico, after White Sands.

The cameras followed:

• October 2010: the film This Must Be The Place shot scenes at the pistachio.
• December 2012: Larry the Cable Guy filmed part of an episode of Only in America at the store, aired in May 2013.
• June 29, 2014: New Mexico True Television aired an episode in which the state’s Cabinet Secretary of Tourism named the ranch and the pistachio a New Mexico True Treasure.
• May 10, 2016: Al Roker and Matt Lauer’s tour of the farm aired on the Today show.
• February 2017: Ride with Norman Reedus filmed at the farm.
• 2018: Ozzy, Jack, and Kelly Osbourne came through for Ozzy & Jack’s World Detour. The farm sells the flavor Kelly invented there, Garlic-N-Honey Pistachios.

Also in 2018, by Simpson’s account, Heart of the Desert answered with a 26-foot LED-lit heart. In 2019 PistachioLand was named Alamogordo Small Business of the Year.

By 2022 Tim McGinn put the yearly count at a quarter of a million visitors, many of them stopping for a picture with the shell. He told KOAT what he meant the plaque beneath it to do: “I kind of felt like his memory would evaporate to anyone else, so I wanted them to always read that. To come and read that plaque and know that Thomas Michael McGinn was the founder of PistachioLand.”