Can it be done for enough side money to pay for itself?

Irrigation is available.  Soil seems ok, currently grows alfalfa.

My vision would be a full operation.  Growing, bottling, selling.

We have a few small ones here but I think 5 acres is the smallest.
Most vineyards grow a verity of grapes, grape crops fail quit often,
when one verity fail they depend on the others to get them through.
The small vineyards around here do a great business because of the CT wine trail,
they have tasting rooms and folks travel from vineyard to vineyard paying $7 for 3 or 4 sips
of wine. People get a passport type book and have the vineyards stamp the pages.
Everyone that gets all pages stamped in a season gets a chance at a drawing of some sort.
The smaller vineyards use grapes they buy if they don't raise enough, wine here only has
to have 60% CT grown grapes allowing smaller vineyards to grow a bigger variety.
I don't think the small vineyards would survive with out the tasting program, most weekends
these places are packed with yuppies and millennials some traveling by limousines.
I don't know if NM has a wine trail program but MA and NY have a couple different ones.

No. Too small. Soil, type of grape, climate and irrigation possibilities will drive what you can get out of it.
Not sheer volume of land. It would be a stretch with the finest grape growing Land on  the planet. Don’t let that kill your dream though.

NM has a quite a few smaller vineyards.  We are looking to buy a small property and i thought it would be interesting to try my hand at wine making.

This wouldnt be a primary income or anything, but maybe it could work into some side money.  I have brewed beer on occasion in the past,  but never grown grapes and made wine.

By looking online a small yield acre would be a lot of grapes to give it a try.  Maybe a half acre.

@stutzcattle knows a thing or three about vineyards and making wine.

5 acres would support a very small winery, but what you think wouldn't be a whole lot of work is going to dominate every free minute you have.  I own and operate a brewery with a winery and restaurant.  I thought it would be about a 30 hr a week commitment.  It's become my full time gig and I now frequently work 90 hr weeks.  I wouldn't want anything to do with a winery that wasn't part of a brewery.  As for the vineyard...It's a shit ton of work.  If I had it to  do over again, I wouldn't have any of my own grapes.  Let some other sucker do all the work and just buy grapes from them.

I should also add that I'm in the brewery brewing beer this morning.  It's a glamorous lifestyle.

Oh yeah, you sparge that wort!

Viticulture is not the easiest of the agricultures.

Some of them here in Arizona just grow a small area of grapes and then buy most of the grapes for the wine that they produce from other areas of the country. It seems like the money (not much but some) is in the winery itself - tours, food, selling the bottles of wine, etc.

That's not uncommon.

I think it's dishonest, personally.

Last time I did the math, an acre might gross 1.5 to 5k depending.  Either x3 after inputs, overhead and labor would seem to be a no go.  Now if you had a winery and were selling wine vs grapes, the #s change, but the start-up costs are nuts and the market in most places is over played.

Most small vineyards sell their grapes. If I was doing 3 acres, I would just sell.

This.

If you want to plant, let me know and I will hook you with some professional winemakers in NM who can guide you. Don’t go it alone and then go knowcking on their doors. They know what they want and what can sell.

Honestly, 3 acres would be just a hassle

I would STRONGLY discourage trying your hand at making wine and starting a winery

Why is it dishonest?

I’m much better and like making wine more than growing grapes.

As a gunsmith, do you craft every single part of your rifles? Grow the tree, hack it down, mill and finish the stock? Mine the iron and build a forge for the barrel?

I'm not telling people I make the barrels. Bartlein handles that. Dave Manson makes my reamers.

I get a blank from Treebone Carving, I'll be up front about it.

I just want some transparency from them. I don't particularly care if they didn't grow it from root to grape or mine their own fertilizer, but being clear about where and how things got where they are is important to me, for much the same reasons that I would prefer everyone put their residual sugars on the label. I like data.

You know, by law, they have to be honest. Labeling laws prohibit misleading info.