The first New Mexico Cup is almost upon us, so E-Rock and I, Stoutmeister, met up with event organizer Marne Gaston on Wednesday afternoon at Marble to talk all about this new event. The Cup will take place Saturday at the Albuquerque Convention Center’s Southwest Exhibition Hall from 1-7 p.m. There will be 12 breweries and six wineries in attendance. To set this apart from Hopfest or Blues & Brews, this is a voting event, where the general public gets to vote for their favorite beers and wines by style. All of us celebrity judges — yes, the Crew is gonna be there to flaunt our “celebrity” alongside real celebrities like Lauren Poole and Tom Joles — will be wandering from booth to booth with the rest of you before we submit our picks.

There are still tickets available online here. For all the info you need to know, check the site, or, preferably keep reading our Q&A with Marne (and for the record, proving that great minds think alike, all three of us separately ordered the Stout Americano while at Marble).

Stoutmeister: What’s the history here? What’s the genesis of the New Mexico Cup, where did the idea come from?

Marne: The idea came from just sitting around, thinking about what was missing from the New Mexico festival (circuit). We wanted to do something that would get the public more involved with different styles and what they should be looking for. Even though people know they like a beer, they may not think about why. I think it’s good to get them think about it. It’s good to get people to think more scientifically. Doing wine and beer, I think there’s a different attendance, you get different people there. You go to a wine festival, there’s always one person in a group of five who would rather be drinking beer. We think some of the wine drinkers will try a couple beers, some of the beer drinkers will try wine. They will find that there will be some crossover. And then we wanted to do professional judging, that gives it a little more merit. And then just for fun we’re doing the celebrity judging.

E-Rock: So overall is there going to be a combination of the professional judging, the celebrity and the public for a best in show award?

Marne: Really, the best of show will be from the professional judging. The public voting won’t be non-biased. It’s not going to be blind tasting. People are not necessarily going to try every beer that they’re supposed to before they vote. We can’t really check. We don’t have the checks and balances to base best in show on that. To base the best in show off of it … if we could figure out a way to do it next year we’ll include it, but right now I don’t know how to do it. So best in show will come out of the professional judging. And then there will be the public’s voting, so there will be awards for that for the breweries and wineries, then the celebrities and the professional. There’s three layers of judging.

Stoutmeister: What’s been the response from the breweries around town?

Marne: Well, I’m sure some get tired of doing the festivals because it’s a lot of work for them. But it’s really the best way to get their beers out there. So for the most part they all come out. We try not to do anything when there’s something else going on. There’s nothing in Albuquerque from October until May. So we felt like this was an empty space and we weren’t going to over-stretch anyone by doing it at this time. There’s really nothing going on this weekend. I really can’t find anything going on.

Stoutmeister: I looked at the brewery list and it’s mostly Albuquerque breweries, so maybe next year, if everything goes well, will you be trying to encourage Mimbres Valley and High Desert to come up and others from up north to come down?

Marne: Oh, yeah. I think when it’s the first year you’re doing something it’s hard for some breweries to drive up here, get a hotel, and do the festival. Once we’ve done it for a year, show them that we have 2,000 people come through, make it something they want to do. For Mimbres Valley to come up here, they have to have a big reason to come up here. They have two breweries to run down south and nothing up here. If we can show them that we can help their business they might come. If we had a hotel sponsor, we tried to get one this year but couldn’t, that would help, too.

Stoutmeister: The economy is still struggling here in New Mexico, maybe worse than other states. Does that continue to be a challenge to find sponsors for these types of events right now?

Marne: Yeah, I think people’s sponsorship money is a lot harder (to come by) than it once was. We manage to get by. We find people that want to market. We have a proven demographic. B.J.’s (Brewhouse) is the sponsor for this event. Where else are you going to find 2,000 beer and wine drinkers in February? People that drink beer come to our events. You can put an ad in the Alibi and people may read it, but you know at a beerfest they’ll be there.

E-Rock: I’ve heard that the professional judging is not taking place on the same day as the festival.

Marne: Yeah, we’re doing the professional on Friday. That’s going to be a blind tasting. It’s probably going to take six hours. Then we’ll have the festival on Saturday.

E-Rock: How is it going to work on Saturday, with the celebrity judging going at the same time as the public judging?

Marne: Basically the celebrity judges will attend the festival like normal. They’ll turn their scoresheets in at the same time (as the public).

Stoutmeister: Will we have a specific area where we’re all sitting?

Marne: No, you’ll just be out in the festival with the public. We tried to think of a way to do blind tasting on Saturday but we couldn’t. The way we have our permit is you have to go to each brewery. We can’t really do blind if you’re going to Marble, you’re going to Tractor. It also works out with our agreement with the Convention Center where the breweries couldn’t sell beer or wine by the box. It’s very complicated.

Stoutmeister: It sounds complicated with all the laws and regulations in this crazy state.

Marne: It’s quite a feat (when compared to) the IPA Challenge. You know, they have one style, and only a few hundred people at a time. We have a couple thousand judging 18 different categories.

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We also talked a little bit with Marne about Blues & Brews moving to the Isleta Amphitheater this year and about keeping Hopfest down at the Hard Rock Casino (which will soon be renamed). All in all, it sounds like things are going well in setting up New Mexico’s next two major beer festivals as well. We will have more on those as we get closer to the events.

Anyway, while our first batch of swanky new Crew shirts will not be ready in time for Saturday (we can thank the snowstorm on the east coast for the delay), you can still find us wandering about the Convention Center, reviewing all the beers in the various categories we have been assigned. Don’t be shy if you want to come up and talk to us about beer, about our site, about why we all grew our beards out during the hockey lockout but still haven’t shaved since the sport has come back, etc.

Until then, I am off to cover the No. 21-ranked UNM baseball team’s season opener at Isotopes Park today at 5 p.m. Come on down and support the Lobos as they aim for their first trip to the College World Series in Omaha.

Cheers!

— Stoutmeister