The Other California Wine Country : Exploring the backroads of Baja’s Guadelupe Valley

It’s downright insulting--a beer can pointing the way to wine country. Yet that’s what marks the turnoff to Baja California’s infant Napa, the Guadalupe Valley.

The huge can stands where Mexico’s Highway 3 cuts inland, just above Ensenada. The label says Tecate, because that’s the name of the beer-making town to which Highway 3 leads. On the way, however, it also passes four of the six wineries that compose Mexico’s leading wine region (the others are in Ensenada).

The pioneering wineries of the Guadalupe Valley have a low profile for now, but that is changing rapidly. Monte Xanic, the region’s hot new boutique winery, won a gold medal for its 1989 Cabernet Sauvignon at last year’s Los Angeles County Fair wine judging. “This area will be famous by the end of the century,” predicts Tomas Fernandez, director general and part-owner of the winery. “What Napa did in 20 years, we’re going to do in the next five or six.”

The region has a climate that wine grapes love. It is colder than Temecula, the wine district near San Diego, and cool at night in summer, thanks to chilly ocean currents. Climate-wise, it ranks with some premium wine districts in Northern California and France.

“The advantage here is you can grow many kinds of grapes,” says Hugo d’Acosta, director general and winemaker at Bodegas de Santo Tomas. “It is cold enough for Riesling and warm enough for Cabernet Sauvignon without that bell-pepper flavor so often found in Alta California wines.” Santo Tomas is growing the Tempranillo grape, which is important in the wines of Spain’s premium wine region, the Rioja, but almost unknown in Alta California; its 100% Tempranillo wine is due out this summer.

Some Baja wines are available outside of Mexico. Tiny Cavas Valmar, which produces only 2,000 cases a year, is shipping to Germany. Santo Tomas plans to ship wines to California this spring. Vinicola L.A. Cetto has a distributor in Chicago, and the wines may arrive in California this year. The Wine House in West Los Angeles managed to turn up a bottle of Domecq Cabernet Sauvignon 1985 but carries no other Mexican wine. “It’s hardly ever asked for,” says one employee. However, several Mexican restaurants in the Los Angeles area serve Domecq’s Mexican wines.

Still, there’s no point in driving to Baja for a case of Cabernet. Only one liter (about one quart) can be taken into California. This regulation is especially hard on winemakers--who can’t carry bottles north for promotion. Even in Ensenada, certain wines can be difficult to find; the town lacks sophisticated wine shops. Liquor stores and supermarkets do stock wine but not the fine reserves or older vintages. Often the only place to taste Baja wines is at the wineries or in upscale local restaurants.

But Ensenada is not flooded with wine tourists. Few Americans have heard about the wine industry there, and those who have might not believe that Mexican wines are as good as some of them are. Then too, the Guadalupe Valley doesn’t supply the amenities of Napa. The terrain is raw and hilly, studded with craggy boulders tossed about in some ancient upheaval. It’s too wild for quaint inns and chic eating places. There’s no phone service, and Mexico 3 is too narrow to accommodate crowds of tourists. (When a crew came to widen a stretch, winery owner Luis A. Cetto rewarded them with lunch.)

But the valley is fine territory for adventuresome souls who like to explore old Russian cemeteries or step inside a Kumiai Indian wa (tepee). Both are present in Francisco Zarco, a town founded by Russian immigrants belonging to the Molokan sect who settled in the Guadalupe Valley around the turn of the century. Headstones in the cemetery are carved in Cyrillic, the Slavic alphabet. Some are so old the letters have worn away.

A Russian museum--the Museo Comunitario del Valle De Guadalupe--displays old farming implements, a man’s high-collared satin shirt, a lacy Russian wedding gown, broken teapots and other relics. Just outside is the wa , where Indians sell handmade baskets.

What does this have to do with the wine industry? Lots. Monte Xanic donated the land and building for the museum, which was founded in August, 1991.

Another Russian cemetery is in San Antonio de Las Minas at the start of the Guadalupe Valley. This one is on vineyard land owned by Santo Tomas. Descendants of the old colony are still around, like the sunburned, red-haired grape-grower and his son glimpsed at Vides del Guadalupe, which is Domecq’s winery. Some of them still make the rough, peasant-style wines of long ago.

To promote their wares, the wineries stage an annual harvest festival (this year July 8 to 25) that includes street parties and cooking contests. One event, a paella competition, acknowledges the region’s many inhabitants of Spanish descent. Monte Xanic holds sunset concerts of Baroque music during the summer. Santo Tomas is constructing a wine bar and restaurant with an entrance that simulates a wine cave. L.A. Cetto will open a tasting room and restaurant in its Tijuana location this year and has added an open-air pavilion for large parties at the Guadalupe Valley site.

Entrepreneurs sniffing out opportunities are sure to hook into this developing industry. Already Americans Tony and Nancy Bica have opened a workshop in Francisco Zarco where they weave grapevines into stylish baskets, wreathes and animal figures, which they sell in the United States.

Here in Baja, procedures can still be primitive. Workers were hand-washing huge glass jugs on the ground at Bodegas San Antonio. At Monte Xanic, sweater-clad employees glued on labels one by one.

But enthusiasm is high. Witness this euphoric statement on a brochure advertising the region: “Our wines . . . are today the best wines of Mexico, perhaps of North America.”