Fort Selden Winery

Vines across from the fort

Fort Selden Road runs along the Rio Grande in the Mesilla Valley, thirteen miles north of Las Cruces by the Las Cruces Sun-News reckoning. At No. 1233, across the road from the adobe walls of the Fort Selden Historic Site, Franklin and Desiree Simon keep one acre of grapevines and a tasting room. The back rows of vines can be seen from inside the room. Sunflowers grow in the vegetable garden, and peach trees in the garden blossom in spring. That season brings the vines on and the wind up. One spring the winery wrote, “We love springtime at the vineyard, when all the vines grow!” and then added of the winds, “we could do without those.”

The tasting room keeps weekend afternoons, Saturday and Sunday from noon to five. It pours Malbec, Shiraz, Cabernet, Tempranillo, Gewurtztraminer, and a blend called American Red. The New Mexico Tourism Department’s listing says the house specializes in full-bodied reds. The newest bottling is MALRAZ, a blend of Shiraz and Malbec. None of it is sold in stores. The grapes are grown, crushed, pressed and barreled on the property, and the bottling, corking and labeling are done by hand at the vineyard. Franklin Simon explained the arrangement to the Sun-News in 2016: “If we sold the wine at festivals and restaurants, it would sell out too fast and we wouldn’t have anything to sell at our winery. You have to come to our winery to buy our wines. This is more fun and gives people the chance to talk to fellow wine enthusiasts.”

The family does the work. Desiree and Franklin run the winery. Their son Dustin, their daughter Jackie, and Jackie’s husband Dave help with the vineyard and winery when they can. “Hands are not hired,” the 2016 newspaper account said. The money was never the point, by Franklin Simon’s own account: “It’s difficult to make profit off of this process. We do it for the fun of making the wine.” That same year he told the paper the winery was for sale, though he was not actively shopping it and would only listen if the right offer came along. On January 9, 2025, the winery announced that it had closed its commercial business and tasting room effective December 31, 2024, “with a sad heart.” Ten weeks later it announced it would reopen on Saturday, April 5, 2025, having “used the past period to perfect our new blend, MALRAZ.”

The winery’s Facebook page carries the line “Wine Worth Defending.” The fort across the road was built in 1865 by troops from Albuquerque, entirely of adobe except for the Administration Building. Its infantry and cavalry units, several of them Buffalo Soldiers, were posted to protect settlers and travelers in the Mesilla Valley from desperados and Apache raiders. A young Douglas MacArthur lived there in the late 1880s, while his father was post commander. The army abandoned the post in 1891. The town took its name later. Until a post office opened in 1926 it was called Fort Selden Springs, after the mineral hot springs the soldiers used. A water analysis then found enough radium for the new name. The Hacienda del Camino Real hot springs and lodging is just down the road from the winery. Leasburg Dam, built in 1908 to send the river into farm canals, is a few minutes away.

Harvest at seven in the morning

The winery counts the harvest among its biggest attractions. Its website describes two weekends in September when family, friends and volunteers come to pick grapes. In 2016 the first picking fell on Saturday, September 3. In 2025 the winery posted thanks to its crews on September 4 and again on September 14, the second time to volunteers who had come “despite the rain.” For 2026 it announced a start of Saturday, August 29, at “7:00 AM sharp (we harvest early while it’s nice and cool!)”. The farm supplied clippers, snacks and drinks. Pickers were asked to bring closed-toe shoes, sunscreen and a sun hat, and no experience was required.

The Sun-News followed the 2016 picking from row to press. The harvest takes about 15 to 30 people, and places fill well ahead. Many of the regulars come from the Jornada hiking group, whose members first knew the winery as a stop at the end of their hikes. A refractometer reading of sugar content decides which rows are ready. The first picking takes the less-ripe grapes for drier wines, mostly Shiraz, and later pickings take sweeter fruit. “Each volunteer gets clippers, a grape basket, and are instructed to take care not to clip leaves,” Dave Kellerman said. “They always do an awesome job.”

Pickers carry full baskets to the ends of their rows. There the fruit is loaded onto an all-terrain vehicle and driven to the de-stemmer, which pulls the stems and gives the grapes their first crush. The grapes rest in bins in a temperature-controlled room for one to two weeks, then go to the press. The juice goes into barrels.

Each member of the family has a harvest post. Franklin, the winemaker, oversees the work. Dustin directs the pickers. Dave handles stemming, processing and the grape bins. Jaclyn Kellerman-Simon helps wherever she is needed. Desiree organizes the social side and the lunch. When the picking is done, the volunteers pose for a group photograph and sit down to food off the grill, with wine. “There were 31 pickers,” Dustin Simon said in 2016 as the crew broke for lunch. “It’s great seeing people talking and connecting over enthusiasm for wine.”

Mesquite and drip line, 2005

The Simons paid for the land with money from property they had sold in the Netherlands, according to the Sun-News. In March 2005, as the winery’s own history tells it, a bulldozer came up the driveway at 1233 Fort Selden Road and began pushing out the brush on a piece of land that had been desert until then. The work was slow, because mesquite roots run deep. Once the bushes were out, the machine leveled the ground. The spring winds were blowing, and sand got into everything. The hard-pan layers were then ripped up so that planting holes could be dug and water would drain, since grape roots do not like wet feet. Next came the planting stakes, the poles for the steel support wires, and the drip irrigation.

On May 5, 2005, the first vines went in: Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Barbera, all on rootstock supplied by New Mexico Vineyards of Deming. The varieties were chosen, the history says, purely for the kind of wine the Simons liked to drink. The planting took about a week. Dad dug each hole, Mom set the vine, and their daughter Jaclyn filled the hole with the first bucket of water and root starter. Two weeks later the first green leaves began to bud out.