Black's Smuggler Winery

The tasting room on Winery Road

The winery can be seen from I-25: rows of grapevines on the mesa, in the shadow of the Ladron Mountains. Reaching it takes more effort. The tasting room is entered from Old US Hwy 85, 42 miles from Albuquerque, and the owners admit that mapping applications sometimes have trouble finding 25 Winery Road. “As Smugglers, this is sometimes handy,” their website says. It gives a map, and a phone number to call “for search and rescue.”

Inside, the room has Southwestern decoration and outlaw-themed accents, and the owners call it “rusty and dusty.” Bottles behind the bar carry the awards the wines have won. Tony Black, the winemaker, is there most days. He will pour tastings from the barrel, explain how the wine is made, or bring out his latest varieties. The room keeps a seasonal schedule. When the days get so short that it is dark by five, it closes at five, and it goes back to six o’clock as the light returns.

The winery serves no food. Visitors, in the website’s words, “are free to bring a whole dang banquet.” In the June 2026 heat the winery advertised its air conditioning and frozen slushies. A piña colada batch was nearly ready, and the last of a blueberry pomegranate was being poured. There were also sun hats for sale, each with a wine-themed sash the buyer picked out. A writer for The Paper in 2021 recommended sharing a bottle on the patio at sunset.

Market days and potlucks

On Thursday afternoons the parking area becomes a farmer’s market. The 2026 season opened June 4, running from four to seven. That first week the winery listed honey, produce, home-grown apricots, sourdough breads, locally made skin care products, and snow peas. By late August the produce coming in had grown sparse, and the owners were deciding whether to continue into September. The market skipped the week before Labor Day while the winery packed for two festivals.

Weekend afternoons draw neighbors. On July 5, 2026, there was rock painting with a potluck at one o’clock. On July 18 a fundraiser supported the Valencia County Animal Shelter. On Saturday, September 5, a “Saturday Fun Day” brought a potluck barbecue, a line dance team, and gift bingo: bring a gift, play for another. The website names the dancers as the “Steppin’ Line” Line Dance Team, and a Facebook post names them as the VCSO Line Dancers. That post came from Veronica and opened, “Tony’s away! Let’s Play.” Tony was at the festivals.

Larger craft fairs fill the grounds in spring and fall. During an April 2026 fair the wind was high, and the winery reported that every vendor was indoors or set safely against the building, with a food truck on hand. The Fall Maker’s Market is scheduled for Saturday, November 14, 2026, a changed date. For Valentine’s Day 2026 the Blacks planned a pairing of four locally made chocolates with four wines.

The winery also travels. In 2026 it poured at the Ruidoso Art and Wine Festival, at Art and Wine in the Cool Pines in Cloudcroft, and over Labor Day at both Balloon Fiesta Park in Albuquerque and the Southern New Mexico Fairgrounds in Las Cruces. The tasting room stayed open that weekend, putting the winery in three places at once. Its events page names Los Lunas Oktoberfest, Socorrofest, and a Christmas event in Carlsbad in early December as still to come.

Saperavi from Deming

The Valencia County News-Bulletin and the Socorro El Defensor Chieftain both reported on the winery, and the Chieftain gave the figures in January 2026. The winery made about 33,000 gallons a year, which the paper put at 1,000 to 1,900 cases. The production space held more than 30 barrels and tanks, mostly white wines, with reds aging for later release.

The grapes come from three kinds of source. There is a one-acre vineyard at the winery and a three-acre vineyard across the river in Las Nutrias, and together they supply about 40 percent of production. The rest comes from other New Mexico growers, in Deming, Tularosa, and elsewhere. “Except for our cranberry wine, everything is New Mexico-grown,” Tony Black told the Chieftain. “That one uses cranberry purée from Washington, but the base wine is still local.”

The winery makes some 17 or 18 wines: dry reds, sweet wines, fruit wines, fortified wines, and a sparkling wine made off-site. Black told the paper that New Mexico buyers tend to like sweeter wines, while his own taste runs the other way. “I started making big dry reds, and those are still my go-to,” he said. He named Tempranillo, Merlot, Syrah, Cabernet, and Saperavi.

The Saperavi has the longest route. The grape comes from the country of Georgia. Cuttings were obtained through the University of California, Davis, grown in a nursery in Deming, and then planted at the winery. Black chose it because Georgia is one of the oldest wine-making countries and New Mexico also has a long history of wine. “A lot of people don’t realize New Mexico was making wine about 200 years before California,” he said. “It felt like a good story to tell.”

The website says outlaws treated the rules more as “guidelines,” and that the winery adapts traditional styles to New Mexico grapes. Its Sauvignon Blanc, for example, gets a splash of Vidal Blanc, a French-hybrid grape that grows well on the range-lands south of Albuquerque, which gives it bright melon notes. In 2021 The Paper wrote about the bottles then on the list:

• Plunder, a red blend aged five years, with a hint of sweet caramel.
• Tempranillo, which the writer called tangy and suited to sweets.
• Tumbleweed, a dry white.
• Sundance, a sweet white.
• Painted Lady Rosé and Sandia Rose.

Black describes the state’s wine trade as a small one. “There are only about 45 wineries in the state,” he told the Chieftain. “Everybody helps each other. If something breaks, someone lends equipment.”

Banished to the Thief Mountains

The name comes from the mountains. Ladrón means thief. The winery sits 18 miles northeast of the Ladron, or “Thief,” Mountains, which the owners say were notorious in the 18th century as a smugglers’ refuge. Local folklore, they write, tells of bandits who hid in those hills, of outlaw adventures, and of treasure stashed in mysterious caves. The state tourism listing adds stories of dangerous men who preyed on the villagers.

Tony Black is from Colorado. The winery’s website says he made wine as a hobby for more than 20 years, and that his wines won awards at competitions and state fairs. Eventually the hobby overflowed the family home in Littleton. He retired from the telecom industry in early 2012; the Chieftain names the company as CenturyLink. The website tells it this way: “his family banished him to the Ladron Mountains and he got serious about living as an outlaw.” The Black’s Smuggler brand followed soon after.

The Chieftain’s version is shorter. It says the operation was licensed roughly 12 years before 2026, after nearly a decade of home winemaking. “We wanted to do something different,” Black told the paper. “Wine had been a hobby for years, and when we moved back to the area, we decided to make it official.” The winery is owned and run by Black and his wife, Mary Ann Black. Her initials sign some of the winery’s Facebook posts.

On January 6, 2024, the Greater Valencia County Chamber of Commerce held its awards gala at Isleta Resort and Casino. There it gave Black’s Smuggler Winery its 2023 Amigo Award, which goes to a business recognized across the state and nation as a positive, friendly image of Valencia County. Tony and Mary Ann Black accepted it, with their daughter, Bri Wagnan, and a granddaughter beside them. “We’ve grown and developed a whole new realm of wines and different varieties and have had a great time doing it,” Black said.