A New Santa Fe Trail -------------------- Reiner Friedel On one of my visits to this area in '95 Geoff Reeves wanted to take me to a micro-brewery - and needed to take me all the way to Taos, to Eski's, to find one. And it was closed that day. So was Embudo. Two years down the road things are looking up in this area, and consequently I'm moving here from Germany... a choice of now four brewpubs in Santa Fe! Well, actually three, the other only serves the beer microbrewed elsewhere in New Mexico. But anything other than cereal beer sort of qualifies... Reason enough for a qualified sampling and grading tour by some esteemed and serious members of the Club, which took place on Saturday, March 22nd. Mike had laid down the itinerary, and was easily recognizable as the tour guide: spot the clipboard. Very professional. Start at 12 noon at Il Vicino's, followed by Second Street, Blue Corn and ending up at Wolf Canyon. Passing Santa Fe Brewing but not stopping (Sorry, Ray!). 75 minutes exactly at each place. I was beginning to admire the German precision of it all. Mike had even dragged along some members from his beer appreciation classes to do some appreciating, Mark and Rita Gray. We of course impressed them with our well trained taste buds and razor sharp judgment, as was shown by exclamations such as "This is good beer!". Ray and Rosemary Tell, Peter McLachlan, John Stewart, Mike Hall, Sandy James and Reiner Friedel made up the hard core of crawlers. Mark and Rita stayed with us for the first two stops, Bryan & Lara Bennett (& Chris) only joined at Second Street. Larry Sitney helped out at Blue Corn, and Mary and Nathaniel made a brief showing too. Unfortunately the only lasting memory of Il Vicino's was Sandy's lost 10 Bucks - change she somehow never got back. Anyway, it's a pizza place, not a brewpub, with the whole feel being "stand in queue, pay, get pizza, eat, leave". The only redeeming feature is that they have micro-brewed beer on tap, 4 different kinds plus a guest ale. They do serve a sampler set served on it's own mat with each glass on a circle identifying the type of beer. This helps with the business of appreciating. Some of us had pizzas that were a bit spicy. After that the beer took on a uniform taste... [but don't forget to mention their wonderful Wet Mountain IPA! -Mike] With Ray kindly volunteering his suburban as the crawling vehicle, we left cars at the first stop and carried on in unison. Thanks, Ray! These trips between appreciation sites were the best. None of the conversation is quotable. But all that laughing was hard, and thank God, thirsty work... At Second Street we were joined by Bryan & Co. and had a large crowd together. By the end of this we were seriously behind time and things would have gotten worse if it hadn't been for the man with the clipboard... A serious requirement on a pub crawl is food, mainly for survival. At the next stop we had lots of that, expertly dished out by Sandy - I've never seen anyone lick their fingers this much... Blue Corn's sampler comes on its own custom made wooden board. Peter fell prey to their $25 offer of joining their Stein club - from then on you pay for a 16 oz beer and get 20 oz. Enter the clipboard: only after Peter had joined Mike gleefully calculated that Peter would need to drink about 60 beers to break even and that just the petrol from Los Alamos would make him a poor man... By the time we hit Wolf Canyon our appreciation was taking a bit of strain. The offer of a brewery tour came as a welcome relief, and we got an expert guide in Brad Kraus showing off his setup. By the end of this most were thirsty again and Peter was finished. It needed some serious root beer and nicotine to revive him. But we still had the clipboard, who decided that this was the time to discuss some "club business" - excellent timing. At the end of which we all appreciated Bryan's volunteering for the April meet. Needless to say that Bryan at this stage was not present... After dinner all round there was still the matter of Sandy's missing ten bucks to sort out, so after Ray dropped us back at Il Vicino's we went in, fortified ourselves with another pitcher, and Sandy tackled the management, who did not appreciate the inquiry at all. "Our staff is honest and the till is not over". Funny that, if it had been an honest mistake the till should have been over, not? The team did end up making a valuable judgment on the best brew-pub visited. Second Street stood out strongly for the best beer and good atmosphere. But I suggest go find out for yourselves and do them all! Planned for Fall was the all New Mexican Monster Crawl. Brunch in Taos at Eski's, clear the head with some chili beer at Embudo, then the four in Santa Fe, finish up at Asset's and Rio Bravo in Albuquerque. We probably won't make it down to the brewpubs in Alamogordo or Las Cruces. But don't bet on that. I'm already in training. Editor's Note: Sandy informed me that she received an envelope in the mail from Il Vicino with a $10 bill in it. No note of apology or any other acknowledgment, but at least she finally got her change.