Sweet Valley High

Even more interesting is the way the wine and food scenes literally feed off each other; in the valley, the proverbial six degrees of separation shrinks to one or two. Case in point: In the airy new tasting room at the Liceaga winery, I’m given a plate of house-made olive oils and Ramonetti cheese, the very cheese Benito Molina was raving to us about the night before. It was made by a friend of his, whose great-grandfather brought the recipe over from Italy. At L.A. Cetto, the region’s largest winery, I try the Nebbiolo made from fruit grown on vines brought over from Italy by Esteban Ferro, father of Enrique Ferro, Liceaga’s current wine consultant.

Nearby, the Mogor-Badan winery supplies the restaurant next door,  Laja, a little house with exposed beams. Produce comes from its own organic gardens, while seafood is caught in the waters off Ensenada. The restaurant’s chef, Jair Téllez, who trained under Daniel Boulud, pairs local olive oil, lamb and quail with wines created literally in his backyard by smaller cult labels like Vinisterra, Casa de Piedra and Tres Mujeres. (No wonder it’s been dubbed the Chez Panisse of Mexico.) Téllez’s new, more casual Ensenada outpost, Restaurante del Parque, where pizzas and roast meats are cooked in a custom-built brick oven, has a wine shop in the same building, so there are plenty of local drops available, many by the glass.

“We have a much more personal relationship with the land,” Hugo d’Acosta, the winemaker who helped create M3, explains as we stroll through the modernist Casa de Piedra winery, built by his architect brother.

“Still, while Mexicans are drinking more wine than ever, it’s mostly imports from Spain, Chile, Argentina. Many still don’t know we’re making wine right here in their backyard.”

"While Mexicans are drinking more wine than ever, it's mostly imports from Spain, Chile, Argentina," Hugo d'Acosta, a local winemaker, tells me. "Many don't know we're making wine right here in their backyard."

He pours me a Casa de Piedra Vino Tinto 2005, a tempranillo-cabernet blend with a berry nose and a spicy finish. D’Acosta, who studied oenology in Montpellier, France, and Turin, Italy, is known as the Mondavi of the region and a pioneering promoter of Baja terroir. He’s one of the first winemakers to create uncommon blends, with a distinctly Mexican spirit that doesn’t copy European styles. Besides managing Piedra and another winery, Paralelo, d’Acosta is a consultant to a number of local wineries and runs what he calls his “escuelita” (official name: Estación de Oficios del Porvenir), a winemaking school in the village of El Porvenir. It’s here that an ever-increasing number of new vineyard owners come to learn and local restaurateurs come to create house wines designed to be paired with their dishes.

D’Acosta is also behind the wines at Adobe Guadalupe, a vineyard and inn run by Don Miller, a former banker from California, and his wife, Tru, a linguist. After breakfast in the kitchen at the Spanish colonial-style guest house, we head to the Millers’ dome-ceilinged barrel and tasting room, their four Weimaraner dogs at our heels. Miller says locals have come to call him Gringo Nice on account of his breaking the mould of the not-so-nice gringo of popular folklore. After tasting five Adobe red blends (they only do reds), all named after archangels, I decide to snap up the Kerubiel 2006, a blend of mostly cinsault and mourvèdre, reminiscent of Rhône-style blends like Châteauneuf-du-Pape or Gigondas. Then Miller brings out the big guns: a mescal called Lucifer. Yikes. I look at the clock: not yet 11 a.m. Before I can refuse, Miller has poured me a shot. What the heck? I knock it back. It’s smooth and smokey with a delightful bite.

Miller tells me about the time, shortly after he and Tru moved here, that the Mexican army paid them an unexpected visit. Rumours had circulated that the new gringos in town were building a drug rehab centre. One day, a certain general, in full armoured regalia, showed up, unannounced, with underlings in tow. Miller’s mother, who was in her mid-90s at the time, happened to be visiting and was lounging by the pool. There were a few tense moments until the younger Mrs. Miller took control. “Tru, who speaks perfect Spanish, invited them in for a glass of wine and a tour of the grounds,” says Miller. “Before I knew it, there were dozens of young soldiers drinking wine and chatting with my mother. She was in her glory. She looked at me and said, ‘Now isn’t this lovely?’”

Surveying the vines  with a low-level Lucifer buzz, I can’t help but agree with Mrs. Miller. As the army guys might say, resistance is futile.

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