August 2021 [by YK]
Valle de Guadalupe (population: 5,900) produces 80-90% of Mexican wine. Wine in Mexico? Yes, you heard it right. Mexico produces very good wine, and most of it is made in this area of Baja, California, 20 minutes northwest of Ensenada, just a 1.5 hour drive from the U.S.- Mexico border. We could make the trip in about 4 hours from Los Angeles. Driving into Mexico from the U.S. is easy. We bought a Mexican auto insurance online ($50 for 7 days) the day before and just drove in. We had lunch in San Diego at a friends’ house, then crossed at the Tecate crossing . The Mexican border guards checked our trunk and waved us through.
This map shows the wineries and the restaurants recommended by our home exchange host (orange color denotes the places we tried)
Our house for 5 days was arranged through homeexchange.com and came with its own vineyard. You can reach Valle de Guadalupe on a major highway (Route 3), but, most of the 100+ wineries are family owned boutique operations on dusty roads off of the main artery. Because of this, you don’t see miles and miles of well groomed vineyards. It almost looks like all the good things are hiding from you. Some of the wineries have a gourmet restaurant attached to them, thus Valle de Guadalupe is a major food destination as well.
By the time we arrived, around 3 PM on a Sunday in August, we were thirsty. Right next door was a hotel with a nice restaurant called Yumano where we got our first margaritas and a snack. Two friends were joining us for 3 nights, thus, it was a perfect way to kill time till their arrival.
After our friends arrived, we had to take care of business: procuring provisions. There was a tiny mini mart nearby, but, they did not have papayas. Very kind English speaking owner of the mart directed us to a real supermarket, Mercado Liz, 10-15 minutes away in the town of Guadalupe. The guys went directly to the liquor section to “understand the local economy” using liquor prices as the most important economic indicator.
Dinner was at another neighborhood restaurant, Cantera Cocina de Valle, right down the road from the house. Wonderful ambiance. great food & drinks, friendly service.
After a breakfast at home with papayas and Mexican pastries, we decided to go into the big town, Ensenada (population: 552,000), for fish tacos. It was a 20 minute drive on the highway, and we first went to the main local market, Mercado los Globos, to look around. Alas! Many businesses were not open on Mondays & the market was quiet.
So we went looking for the fish taco stand recommended by our host: Tacos Fenix. A long line was formed in front, and there was no place to sit. So we walked up a couple of blocks on the same street and went to a place whose name contained the word “Fenix” (phoenix) and had a sitting area with portable tables and chairs. Tacos were mostly in $1-2 range & quite good.
We drove a couple of minutes to get closer to the ocean, parked the car and walked around. With the cruising shut down due to the pandemic, most tourist shops and eateries were closed, which was rather sad to see. With temperatures climbing well into the 80’s Fahrenheit, we got tired quickly and drove back home.
We had a killer view of the sunset every day from our backyard.
We were happy to just hang out and eat the left overs from the night before and the lunch that day. $6 bottle of wine we jokingly picked up from the super market was surprisingly good.
We have a friend who has a branch of his business in Tijuana, speaks fluent Spanish, and knows food and wine. He claimed he knew the best Mexican restaurant in the world & that we had to go there since it’s in the Valle: La Cocina de Dona Esthela. As we were driving on a series of dirt roads following Google Map’s directions, we were getting more and more confident that we were lost. Pat said one more turn & we should go back. But there were other cars before and after us on either side of the road, and why would they be here unless… Right! There it was. The big parking lot was full when we arrived 11-ish, but the wait was only about 15 minutes. Some staff spoke English and tried to help us with ordering, but, the menu was extensive and we could not understand what’s what. We kind of stuck to what we already knew: pancakes, Rancheros, Americana coffee etc. I ordered a mixed plate of something so I could sample variety of foods that the restaurant offered.
Everything was so good! Nothing fancy. Just something out of grandma’s kitchen kind of stuff. Even at a super chef’s restaurant, not everything can be super. Dona Esthela understands how each dish or drink should be so that one can have the most delicious experience of it.
We had a list of recommended wineries compiled by our host. We picked one close on the map from Dona Esthela: Vena Cava Winery. We discovered one tends to lose sense of distance when driving on bumpy dirt roads. Where is this winery? But we did find it & joined a tasting that was about to start: a mixture of regular and organic wines ($20/person). Only the guys bought the plan, and we ladies tasted the tasting & got almost drunk. Good stuff. All 4 of us liked the regular wines better. We could not possibly drink any more wine & the temperature was not helping. So our winery hopping didn’t progress from there.
Our friends were heading home the next morning. Where should we have the last dinner together? I picked Fauna because I wanted to see the supposedly beautiful environment and architecture. Commonly known as one of the top restaurants in the whole of Latin America, this might be the best chance of getting in without a reservation thanks to the pandemic. Turned out, there was a guard at the gate to Buruma Winery where Fauna was located who checked the reservation status. He thought we were heading to the Beer Garden which did not require a reservation & let us through. Once we arrived at the restaurant, they were willing to fit us in & even gave us a short tour of the environment. The reputation about the beauty of the place was not over-hyped. Someone with unmatched aesthetic sensibility designed this complex for sure.
The most important thing about a restaurant is food, of course. We ended up ordering $45/person pre-fixe 7-course meal with a bottle of wine. This is the kind of meal you would have to pay well over $100/person in top restaurants in the U.S. We sat at an outdoor table for 4, thus, it was easier to get up and walk around a bit in between the courses to digest a little so that we could enjoy each dish with better attention. We were getting pretty full by the third course, but, we were so willing to eat every bit of what followed. We almost succeeded.
After our friends left, the weather got even hotter. Still, we had to move around to digest the previous night’s feast. So we drove into the town of Guadalupe 15-20 minutes up the main road. We thought we would walk around for a while and find a simple local taco joint for a quick lunch. Well, there really wasn’t a lot to see or do there & much of the town was shut down due to the pandemic. We walked into a roadside hotel restaurant and had another full meal as shown above.
Let’s try something different for dinner, we said. A pizza restaurant with live music sounded appealing. Ochentos Pizza was one of those places that were hiding from plain sight. The rule that worked around here was when you are in doubt, keep going. The restaurant was perched on top of a hill, and the view was fantastic. Pizza and salad were decent, the guitar music was pleasant. So it was a nice diversion from a Mexican meal.
I decided to learn more about Dona Esthela after the first visit and realized we ordered all the wrong things: corn pancakes were to die for, not the flour ones that are there for Americans; Coffee should be the cinnamon infused Mexican coffee; freshly squeezed orange juice is a must etc., etc. So we HAD TO go back. Frankly, I am not a pancake and egg breakfast lover, but, the corn pancakes at Dona Esthela’s with Mexican style eggs – and that orange juice – I will love it every morning! (Well, we did go back the next morning before heading home.)
Where can we go when it’s 90 degrees outside? I was interested in a hike to hot springs, but, not now! So we went to the Wine Museum, pictured above. It was nice and cool inside as expected. We had been there before, but the only thing I could remember was that wine was invented not in Italy, France or Spain but Georgia – no, not the state but the country in Caucasus Mountain. After the second visit, that’s still all I remember. Exclusive use of Spanish language at the museum did not help.
Let’s visit one more winery before heading home, we thought. I picked La Cetto, the biggest winery in the area with scheduled tours. Get there after the temperature cools off, have a free tour, buy a few bottles of wine, then have a nice sunset dinner – said my clever planning. When we arrived there, they were about to close the gate an hour ahead of Google information. (Google did not keep up with the pandemic hours, it seemed.) We did manage to slip into the store and picked up a few reasonably priced bottles – which we enjoyed later at home and said, “we should’ve bought more!!” If anyone ever saw a Mexican wine in the U.S., it might have been La Cetto since that is the only winery big enough to have marketing ability to do so. They have a wide range of products from $3 bottle to $100+ ones.
Dinner was at La Esperanza Baja Med, the originator of Baja Mediterranean cuisine, hiding behind the bushes almost right across from the Buruma Winery entrance. Fresh, healthy, tasty food and beautiful sunset view. What’s there not to like!
5 days went by so fast, and, we didn’t even scratch the surface of the wine & food scene of Valle de Guadalupe. Rather unpretentious vibe of this valley that is full of surprises will entice us to return whenever possible. After all, it’s just a 4 hour drive from home!
Crossing the border back into the U.S. was not complicated — it just took a long time. We had heard that our friends got through the Tijuana Crossing in 20 minutes with their Global Entry status. Our wait time was 2 hours at the same crossing. We applied for Global Entry as soon as we got home.
Small Wide World 