The Guadalupe Valley

Mexican wines - who knew? Well you do now. 

Those three bottles represent an outlay of less than thirty bucks at L.A.Cetto winery, the largest in the Guadalupe Valley. We arrived Tuesday after driving north from the San Pedro Martir National Park.

The valley has become a desirable destination for winemakers and chefs apparently, the new Napa Valley highlighting Mexican cuisine and wine making skills.

The valley sits astride Highway 3 between Ensenada and Tecate on the US border. It’s a broad estuary shape at the Ensenada end but closes rapidly to a mountain pass at the northern end where I took the picture above looking south toward Ensenada. 

It is a beautiful and fertile area filled with remarkable architecture as new wineries are built reflecting all the crazy and gorgeous architecture we’ve seen in established wine regions. 

Gratuitous Rusty picture under GANNET2: 

For a passerby Ensenada is a crappy town. It has all the shops and services from Costco to a Ram dealer (!) but it is a serious city concerned with commerce and shipping and not necessarily people like us. For our pass through town Layne found a fine taco shop for a traditional Baja lunch! Finally we got fish tacos. 

Add your own salsa and sauces and split the fish between the two tacos they serve underneath the fish. A great three dollar lunch. But after shopping we moved in to the main event: the wine valley. 

Our chosen campground had another couple of single men camping. On our side of the field we were alone and for twenty bucks a night (dollars accepted!) we had hot showers clean toilets and all the rest. 

You pick your spot and before dark Luke Everett comes by and collects with a smile and a story.  He appears in a movie you can watch on Amazon Prime called “Hearing Everett” and the reason is that he is hearing impaired. The campground is one way they raise money for the school for the deaf across the street. A cool use of our payment I thought. 

Let me say I can see why they grow grapes so successfully in this valley. The cold breeze blows up all afternoon and into the night. This is California, a different California but a mixture of hot sun dry heat and cool marine air. So they grown grapes and serve food. Layne found this place:

Salvia Blanca (White Sage) is rated number one on Trip Advisor. My steak and eggs Mexican style: 

Layne had shredded pork and octopus on a tostada. 

Mexican pastries tend to be dry and not terribly sweet. We put this theory to the test: 

Not overly sweet but a chocolate center and raspberry sauce helped make the soft pastry delicious. 

Then we walked off the meal in the astonishing garden. 

You could rent  a cabin here. Imagine that. 

Then it was time to taste. We tried the small boutique winery Sol y Barra a winery built from scratch by a French Swiss pioneer who came from Switzerland to cook and went on to grow wine grapes.

The walls of the building are hand made using Cob, an adobe type mud that isn’t made into bricks but is built up solid, two inches at a time. 

The winemaker Aimé Desponds built the whole thing and makes a very drinkable rosé, the modern fad that is not a sweet wine. We drank it with Layne’s green curry fish using fillets bought in Ensenada. 

Then we tried the huge winery, the biggest in town created by the winemaker who first worked at Domecq in the valley before branching out on his own and creating L.A. Cetto. It’s a very formal environment, lots of “don’t do this or that” signs and the security guard yelled at Rusty when he got out of the van in the parking lot. No dogs here. But they make delicious inexpensive wines. I liked drinking the tasting that we shared. 

Finally Luke had mention Doña Lupe a place where they bake bread and pizzas and bottle all sorts of flavors in oils sauces and jams. Layne had fun buying presents and sorting picnic foods for our long drive over the top of the Sea of Cortez back to mainland Mexico.

Bread and cheese, olives spices and sauces and jams. It’s all here. 

Rusty waited patiently for Layne to finish shopping. 

And then back to walk the campground and wait for the cold California night breeze.