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 Entertainment | Restaurants & Dining | November 2005 
Baja Wines' New Buzz
 Diane Lindquist - Union-Tribune
| | Christoph Gaertner, winemaker at the Vinisterra winery in Valle de Guadalupe, drew a glass of wine to check the progress. |
Valle De Guadalupe – When the market for Mexican wines plummeted 20 years ago, growers in this valley northeast of Ensenada started ripping out their grapevines.
But now a new breed of vintner has arrived, and the distinctive wines they're creating are capturing international medals, drawing aficionados and boosting tourism.
"They're planting grapes that produce a high-quality product," said Michael Farres, co-owner of downtown San Diego's Wine Bank. "People are coming in asking for them. I can't get enough."
A few years ago, there were only a handful of wineries in the area's three wine valleys 65 miles south of San Diego. Now there are 20, and more are starting all the time.
Cabernet sauvignon, grenache, tempanillo, merlot, and an array of other grapes are being planted and vines are being grafted onto stock that survived. Hot and dry days, cool Pacific breezes at night and several microclimates are helping the vintners create varietals and blends with intriguing, complex personalities.
Instead of the cheap, bulk wines that used to be associated with Mexico, the new wines are upscale, averaging $20 to $50 per bottle.
The wine resurrection has touched the entire Valle de Guadalupe, which is home to most of the region's wineries.
Over the past few years, Mexican and foreign investment has poured into the area. While most of the money has gone into tourism and hospitality operations, equestrian enterprises and production of honey, olives and olive oil are all experiencing an uptick.
As a result, area residents and newcomers alike have more job opportunities.
Mexican federal and Baja California state officials, who once encouraged industrial development in the valley, have reversed themselves and now are protecting and promoting the local wine industry.
The state government hopes to make it easier to visit the area by expanding to four lanes from two the Ensenada-Tecate highway that leads into the valley. It already has hardtopped a portion of one of the area's dusty, washboard arteries, and it has erected signs marking a Ruta de Vino to many of the wineries.
Nowadays, visitors arrive every weekend for tastings. Several companies offer bus tours from San Diego. Two inns have opened and more are planned.
The annual three-week Fiestas de la Vendimia – which means festivals of the grape harvest – in late summer draws 20,000 people, including some from as far away as Europe and Asia. The event offers samplings from area restaurants and wineries along with classical, jazz and Latin music performances.
"It's more than the grape and the bottle of wine. It's important to have the combination with tourism and art and culture," said Christoph Gaertner, who is the winemaker at Vinisterra, a Valle de Guadalupe winery that opened in 2002 and produces 5,000 cases annually.
"A lot of people are saying that Guadalupe looks like Napa Valley 30 years ago."
The Valle de Guadalupe cannot claim the stature and size of the well-known California winemaking regions, but it accounts for more than 90 percent of Mexican wines. It is increasingly recognized as an up-and-coming wine area, along with regions in Eastern Europe, New Zealand, India, Thailand and China, says Matt Skinner, a London sommelier who spent two years traveling the globe to research and write the book "Thirsty Work."
"The fact they're making good product is amazing – and in a very short period of time as well," he said.
Perseverance
The area's viniculture reaches back centuries to the grapes that priests in the Spanish missions planted to make wine for religious services. Some of the newest winemakers are resurrecting Mission grapes from vines descended from those planted during that era.
Baja California's first commercial operation was Santo Tomás, which opened in 1888 and remains the area's biggest winery. To upgrade its own products, the business has relocated its winemaking from downtown Ensenada to a sophisticated facility in the Santo Tomás Valley south of town. Santo Tomás, along with San Vicente and Guadalupe, are the three wine-growing valleys in the region.
Several of the new wineries sprouted from the Santo Tomás operation.
But many credit vintner Hans Backhoff with inspiring the area's boutique winery boom.
Backhoff, an Ensenada native who holds a doctorate in food science, and his partners started the Monte Xanic winery in late 1980, just after Mexico joined the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which regulates global business. The deal opened Mexico to foreign competitors, whose superior products soon forced Baja California wine producers out of operation.
"People thought we were crazy," Backhoff said.
He persevered, adopting grape varieties and winemaking techniques, such as aging in French oak barrels, to produce higher-grade products. The wines have become so popular that some years Backhoff can't produce enough to meet demand.
The shed where he began has been replaced with a two-story winemaking structure and tasting room. He makes 50,000 cases a year, including four white wines, six reds and a rosé. Backhoff has blasted a massive cave into the mountain behind the winery to store 4,000 barrels of wine. And he plans to add a restaurant on land atop the cave that will overlook a small lake on the property.
Backhoff's success – and that of Chateau Camou, which followed shortly after – inspired others to undertake similar ventures.
"It took quite a while to convince people you could make quality wines," Backhoff said. "Now I can't count the number of people coming."
Most of the new vintners are Mexican.
In fact, Vinisterra owner Abelardo Rodriguez's grandfather, Gen. L. Abelardo Rodriguez, who owned Santo Tomás from the late-1920s to the mid-1960s, served as the country's interim president from 1932 to 1934.
There's also a strong European influence.
Some trace their ancestry to Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland or Spain.
Others have been educated or trained in Europe. Camou operations director Victor Torres Alegre, for instance, studied in Bordeaux, France, and serves as an international wine jurist.
"I go to France every two years to learn the new techniques. And we all use these techniques in the wineries," he said.
Still others are coming from across the Atlantic and the Pacific to work in the valley's wine-related activities. The wineries employ about 200 people in full-time, permanent jobs. Several thousand more are hired temporarily during the growing and harvesting seasons.
Don Miller, a former California banker who built and operates the six-room Adobe Guadalupe inn, winery and stables, is the only U.S. vintner. His wife, Tru, is Dutch.
Many people are joining the industry under the tutelage of Hugo D'Acosta, who once was the winemaker at Santo Tomás. He now works as winemaker at Adobe Guadalupe and owns the Casa de Piedra winery.
A few years ago, friends persuaded D'Acosta to teach them winemaking. The endeavor has since turned into a full-fledged school in the town of Porvenir that is churning out as many vintners as it is wines. This year there were 100 students, each paying $100 for a term that ran through the growing and harvest season.
"The most important thing we've learned is we're able to make wines that have a taste that's distinctive to Baja California," D'Acosta said. "We need more producers to have a very strong subject. We want to show different styles."
J.C. Bravo, Tres Valles and La Farga – all micro-boutiques – are among the operations that got their start in D'Acosta's school.
A dedicated promoter of the region's development, D'Acosta recently spearheaded a deal in which European and U.S. investors will back the development of more Baja California wines.
The Right Market
Baja California vintners are encountering numerous market challenges. Their strategy of big quality, small quantity limits where the product can be sold. Monte Xanic's output of 50,000 cases per year makes it about the largest of the boutique wineries. Most turn out about 1,000 to 5,000 cases.
That means most don't have the volume to sell to big retailers such as Costco, Wal-Mart and Trader Joe's.
Nor do they want to.
Miller, whose Adobe Guadalupe winery produces between 2,000 and 5,000 cases a year, said he has decided to suspend sales to Costco because his products are better suited to restaurants and specialty wine shops.
"We're a winery where people come who know about wine and want to know more," said his wife, Tru.
Mexico represents the vintners' biggest growth potential but also their biggest obstacle.
It's a market more accustomed to beer, tequila, whiskey, rum and kahlua. If Mexicans drink wine at all, it's most likely French or Chilean. A 25 percent tax rate on their businesses and a 15 percent sales tax in most of the country elevates the cost of a product that once was inexpensive.
Nevertheless, Baja California wines are becoming more popular with Mexicans, said Gaertner, the Vinisterra winemaker.
"We see the Mexican market is growing. It's expanded five times in 10 years," he said. "Now people are willing to pay the price for Baja California wines."
That goes for U.S. visitors as well, although customs rules limit them to bringing one bottle per person back across the border.
Most of Valle de Guadalupe's vintners are more concerned that the success and attention they are enjoying might undermine the area's unique character.
While locals are enjoying the recent increase in visitors, they don't want to see the valley overrun by tourists, particularly those unappreciative of their products' nuances. A saying commonly repeated these days reflects this attitude: "Bad roads bring good tourists. Good roads bring bad tourists."
"What I would like to see and what I see are different," D'Acosta said. "I would like to see more wineries focused on good wines. I would like to have visitors, but visitors who understand the wines."
"When the region becomes more famous than the wines, that's scary," he said. "We need to be very careful about that."
For more information about Baja California wineries, go to www.discoverbajacalifornia.com/home.htm - diane.lindquist@uniontrib.com
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