Historic Architectural & Interiors Walking + Wine Tasting Tour

Blue sky over sunlit adobe. A hand-carved door leading to a secret courtyard. Plastered walls mixed with mica or straw, glistening in the light, and in spring, wisteria spilling purple over the walls. These are the

details that make Santa Fe unlike anywhere else, and this walk teaches you to see them. Over a morning on foot through the historic Eastside, you learn to read the city the way its builders wrote it.

At the heart of the tour are the three architectural styles that shaped Santa Fe: the earthen, rounded forms of Pueblo style, the classic symmetry and brick trim of Spanish Territorial, and the tall, narrow pitched roofs of Northern New Mexican. Winding down the residential backroads of Canyon Road's gallery district, you begin to tell them apart, and to understand the history, faith, and cultural crossroads written into each one. Your guide also traces the acequias, the centuries-old irrigation channels that still run alongside the walkways, quietly watering gardens the way they have for generations.

The morning ends with a well-earned toast. At the Gruet Tasting Room inside the historic Hotel St. Francis, you settle in for a tasting of the sparkling wine that put New Mexico on the map for oenophiles, an improbable story of a French winemaking family who found that this high desert was perfect for méthode-champenoise bubbles. It is the ideal finish to a morning spent uncovering the city's quiet, hidden beauty.