A decade ago our associate editor toured the top Mexican wine district of Valle de Guadalupe in Baja, the main production center and the area that wins the most awards for its wine, its food, and its combinations of the two. When she went back recently for an update, she dug even deeper into the trends that are emerging in the area’s vino culture and focused on some of the players who are making things happen.
Ten years ago we said, “Our latest travel tour feature is on an area of Mexico that you would think would be ripe for a flood of foreign visitors: the Mexican wine region around Ensenada.” Now it is certainly more popular, with rising restaurant and hotel prices to match, but it’s still mostly a weekend getaway place for curious southern Californians, not a fly-in destination that attracts wine lovers like Mendoza or Napa Valley. Slowly but surely though, the word is gradually getting out and the wines are winning more awards every year.
Mexican wine has never really caught on in a big way north of the border, however, despite ever-greater quality. A lack of promotion and worries about border violence have kept a lot of tourists from crossing by land from San Diego and heading south a bit. So while Napa, Sonoma, the Finger Lakes, and even Oregon get a steady stream of wine enthusiasts coming through every day, Mexico’s wine region on the same coast is still trying to get foreigners to take it seriously.
Some would see that as a positive, however, since the wineries are seldom crowded, especially mid-week, and you can often chat with the owners or winemakers. You have plenty of interesting hotels to choose from that charge a fraction of those at the other end of the Baja Peninsula and now that a Banyan Tree has opened, a bit of international marketing muscle is coming in. You will have to get in touch in advance to get a reservation at a top restaurant on a Saturday night, but it’s partly because the spaces aren’t very large. At Cocina Doña Estela, you might be looking at an hour-long wait to eat at this popular diner.
The quality of what you get, however, is quite high. Here’s what our editor Lydia found at one of the standouts:
Dinner finds us at Fauna, a place I have been wanting to go since it opened in 2017. Run by chef David Castro Hussong and his wife, pastry chef Maribel Aldaco Silva, Fauna is consistently on all the “best of” lists that travelers obsess over. It was one of the best meals of the year for me, with plates like a heavenly half fish in guajillo mixed sauce and a tatemado scallop ceviche, as well a concise list of house-made cocktails that challenge the local wine for a place at the table.
Everything is perfectly flavored, with salt, sweet, umami, and herbal making appearances in each dish along with the ubiquitously incredible seafood of the region. We stumble home stuffed and high on flavor, unable to think about the possibility of eating every again…
This was one of the first areas of the new world to see grape vines planted, earlier than the more famous spots to the north. Some 80% of Mexican’s wine production is based here, but that’s not the only reason to visit. There are Spanish mission buildings still standing. If you get tired of just eating and drinking wine, you can turn the car west and soon be at the ocean, enjoying a mostly deserted beach. This is an exciting time to visit, with a major transformation in motion from the old days of big commercial wineries to dozens of emerging options on the evolving Mexican wine trail.
Ensenada was previously not much of a draw on its own, but all the owners, chefs, and bartenders living there are transforming the scene to make it the kind of place they want to live in. “We head down to the Santo Tomas plaza in the heart of Ensenada, a collection of locales that have been built in what was once the storage facilities of Santo Tomas winery. This is a perfect example of the effervescence happening in Ensenada right now…They are making the city their own and elevating its culinary and drink options with artisanal cheese shops, gourmet pizza joints, and craft cocktail bars.”
Check out our story on top restaurants in the region and wineries doing something different, like biodynamic winery Santos Brujos that is using only its own grapes and the “minimal intervention” wines at Pijoan, where the facility also makes vermouth.
Take a ride with us, touring the top wineries, checking out some new hotels, and getting the lowdown on notable places to eat in the ultimate wine country region of Mexico. This area is not very compact so you need to plan your trip carefully. Use Lydia’s experience as a surefire starting point and follow the links to our detailed hotel reviews when you’ve got your dates picked out for Mexico’s top wine region.
Click here: Eating and Drinking Along Mexico’s Wine Trail
