Balzano Vineyards

The tables at Balzano Vineyards are set for tea. Afternoons here offer botanical teas, artisanal treats, and pairings from the estate’s own grapes, and seating is limited. In April 2026 the winery advertised its spring parties as “an afternoon of elegance, fine teas, and springtime treats with Ms Janie.” Ms Janie is Janie Balzano, who takes the bookings by phone and email.

The vineyard lies along the Pecos River near the ghost town of Seven Rivers, on Seven Rivers Highway. Guests sit out on the patio, in the gardens, or among the vines, or stay inside at a bar the family describes as modern “with a rustic flair.” The winery’s Facebook page puts it in fewer words: “Special events center winery, pizzeria, fresh pies and you!” The house wine is called Spirit of Seven Rivers, and a new tasting room stands near the vineyard. Out in the rows, the family writes, a visitor may see four generations of Balzanos weeding and pruning the vines.

Showers, graduations, and a goat named Bentley

Most of the calendar belongs to other people’s occasions: weddings, bridal and baby showers, wine-tasting parties, receptions, and corporate retreats. The winery’s page recorded several in 2026. A boy named Bentley celebrated his fifth birthday and was invited back to see “your namesake baby goat anytime.” A newborn was welcomed as “lil Wildflower.” A graduate who wore number 21 had a Saturday night of “Lasagna, games, fishing, dancing and s’mores.” In June, on receiving an acknowledgement, the page thanked the community for sharing “weddings, showers, memorials and fund raisers.” In September it announced that the vineyard had been selected Best Venue. Six days later it corrected itself: “So apparently I lied... Big Bass won the event space congrats! I was given the wrong info but it made me really happy for a couple of days.”

The pumpkin patch named on the home page, “Balzano Family Vineyard & Pumpkin Patch,” was not held in 2026. On October 3 the winery posted that “due to circumstances beyond our control” there would be no patch, and that it remained open for weddings, showers, parties, and events.

Maxwell, 1912

The family began farming in New Mexico far to the north. In 1912 Tony and Jennie Balzano, both Italian immigrants, bought a farm at Maxwell and raised five children there. Tony made wine for neighbors and friends. When Prohibition came, the family history says, he took to bootlegging it and sold it in nearby Colorado. “A series of unfortunate events” left the youngest son, Bill, in charge of the farm at a very young age. With his wife, Mary Jean, he raised cattle, sheep, and pigs, grew alfalfa, and ranched thousands of acres through years of drought. In 1956 a tornado struck the farm and the family lost everything. Bill rebuilt the homestead. He and Mary Jean made sure their four children went into other work: Rick became a pharmacist, Gary a dentist, Debbie an accountant, and Dale a teacher and coach.

Dale and his wife, Janie, kept a small farm of their own while he taught school in Maxwell, and their children showed sheep, pigs, and cattle in 4-H. In 1985 Dale took a coaching job in Carlsbad and moved the family south.

Concrete feeders on the Pecos

In 2008 the Balzanos bought the Seven Rivers property, 150 acres that had been a cattle feed lot. By the family’s account it held concrete feeders, mounds of manure, and “more rats than you could imagine.” They began planting vines soon after, and years of cleaning, renovating, and planting followed.

A safe full of longleaf pine

Dale Balzano taught and coached basketball for more than 20 years and, as New Mexico Magazine put it in 2022, started his retirement as a winegrower. His friend and mentor Paolo D’Andrea, of Luna Rossa Winery in Deming, advised him to open a tasting room for the family’s wines. In 2007, the year before the Seven Rivers purchase, Dale bought an 1892 brick building in downtown Carlsbad with his son, Derek, and his business partner, Michael Moore. The building had housed irrigation district offices and the First National Bank. A tasting room alone would not pay the bills, so the partners made the building into the Trinity Hotel & Restaurant, with nine rooms. The old irrigation office is one of them, and it still holds its enormous safe. Dale has been sole owner since 2012, and Spirit of Seven Rivers has been poured at the Trinity for several years.

In Dale’s telling, the building had a front window shot out, water pouring through the roof, a back wall near collapse, and “no heat, no air-conditioning, no water system, and power from 1905.” When the engineer finished the plans, Dale asked what he thought. “Boys,” the engineer said, “I’m going to light a candle for you.” The historical society required every window to be made to work. Five men spent about four months replacing ropes and weights, and then the windows were sealed shut. The society at first refused an opening from the lobby to the restaurant, then allowed it at the last minute. The crew cut a three-foot gap and used its bricks to repair the outside walls. There was still nothing to frame the doors, which were longleaf pine from Alabama. Then, Dale said, “We found runs of longleaf pine on the shelves in the safe. They’d been sitting there for 130 years.” The frame was built with three inches of wood to spare.