”We have Mexico‘s best wine and restaurants—and its worst roads!” declares Fernando Pérez Castro, the 47-year-old proprietor of Lomita and Finca La Carrodilla wineries in Valle de Guadalupe, as we jostle along a maze of dirt lanes, past fields and boulder-strewn hillslopes.
“And GPS can be funny aqui,” adds Sheyla Alvarado, chef at Lunario, Lomita’s acclaimed restaurant. Coming to pick up me and Barry, my partner, at our hotel from only a few miles away, they got lost. “Happens even to people who live here!” she laughs.
Situated in the northern Baja California Peninsula just under two hours from San Diego, Valle de Guadalupe is Mexico’s premier viticultural region, producing more than 70 percent of the wine in a country still mostly associated with beer and tequila. As viticultural regions go, Baja isn’t exactly brand new. But recently I found myself captivated by the expressive—and sometimes outright funky—bottlings from its new generation of winemakers that I tasted at Mexico City’s restaurants and natural wine bars. U.S. chefs and sommeliers have been taking notice too; these days one can find Valle wines at Napa Valley stalwart The French Laundry. Equally intriguing were reports from my Mexican food journalist friends about the culinary scene effervescing just south of the border.
Left: The Pictograma Winery was designed by Rojkind Arquitectos, an innovative Mexican studio and sits on the Banyan Tree hotels property; Right: Head chef Sheyla Alvarado crafts a dish at Lunario, the recipient of the prestigious Sustainable Restaurant Award at Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants 2024.
Photo by Bethany Mollenkof
Eager to meet the forward-thinking vintners and chefs transforming this former ranch country into one of Mexico’s most compelling destinations for eating and drinking, Barry and I had landed in San Diego that afternoon, to be chauffeured south on the Baja coast highway, with glimpses of cliffs and Pacific surf in the early October fog. Turning inland, up through chaparral-stubbled granite hills into the Valle proper, we found the afternoon suddenly shining—and freakishly hot.
It was close to 100°F when we arrived at the Banyan Tree Veya Valle de Guadalupe, a 16-acre wellness retreat that opened in 2024, the first hotel in the Valle from an international hospitality group. After a dip in the plunge pool overlooking rows of young vines at our stylish villa— there are 30 on the property—we’d hit the ruts and dust with Pérez Castro and Alvarado. Our plan? To dine at Lunario following a tour of Finca La Carrodilla, the organic winery and farm that supplies its ingredients.
“Over 500 years ago the conquistador Hernán Cortés ordered vines planted in Mexico for the Christian sacrament,” Pérez Castro says, as we stroll in the soft early twilight among his plots, where stray post-harvest clusters of purple grenache grapes still peek. Viticulture in Baja goes back to the early 18th century, when Catholic missionaries began planting vines to produce altar wines. The Valle’s first commercial winery. Bodegas de Santo Tomás, opened in 1888 on the site of a former Dominican mission.
Pérez Castro’s own family story is typical of the region. In 2004 his parents moved from Mexicali to the Valle, where they built a vacation home. They later started Lomita—about five miles away from Finca La Carrodilla—as something of a retirement project, and officially launched it in 2009. By then, the Valle had around 15 wineries, most of them small hobby ventures turning out no more than 5,000 cases, produced by aspiring winemakers lured here by sunny weather, affordable land, and above all, Pérez Castro says, “a desire to be part of Mexico’s sexy new wine movement.” At the time, he recalls, the area had perhaps only three or four enologists.
“And now?” He gestures at his sleek modernist facilities. “The Valle has over 150 wineries, and the scene has gone sophisticated with fancy hotels and restaurants recognized by Michelin and 50 Best Latin America.”
But the Valle’s fragile ecosystem is under threat. “Our resources, especially water, are limited,” says Pérez Castro, who practices organic and agroecological farming, harvesting and sorting his grapes by hand and using a free-flow production method to move grapes around without the use of machines. “Being [in] a semi-arid region, we can’t demand from nature more than it can provide.
“Sustainability,” he concludes, “is our only way forward.” We’ll hear this mantra often during our visit.
Valle de Guadalupe has a Mediterranean-like microclimate.
Photo by Bethany Mollenkof
It’s worth traveling all the way to the Valle just for a meal at Lunario, the minimalist stone-and-wood restaurant founded by Pérez Castro in 2019 on Lomita winery’s grounds and awarded a Michelin Green sustainability star in 2024. During our dinner that evening, each new dish brings a flash of excitement. “We’re so lucky to grow most of our food,” says chef Alvarado, presenting a plate of lightly smoked Ensenada oysters in an electric-green mole that’s highlighted with a Japanese yuzu kosho made with fermented shishito peppers—a lovely pairing with Lomita’s bright chardonnay.
The 34-year-old Alvarado, who hails from the Mexican state of Sonora, honed her craft at such places as Cosme in New York City and Mirazur in Menton, France. “But I’m happiest here,” she says as we savor her striking black-on-black composition of blue corn and nopal tamale with a dusky sauce of burnt guajillo chilies and onion. A luminous piece of striped bass follows, slicked with a coffee emulsion and accompanied by an addictive sweet corn–chili atole.
“We are a young region,” muses Pérez Castro over matcha-like ice cream Alvarado makes from green marigold stems, “far away from traditions and rules in the rest of our country, where everything is recorded and codified.” The chef nods: “We get to create our own concept of Baja cuisine, put whatever we want in our tamales and moles.”
It’s this spirit of imagination unconstrained by tradition, I’ll realize, that makes the Valle such an exciting destination for those seeking discovery—rutted roads notwithstanding.
Karina Campos of Wine Eat and Travel curates intimate picnics at the casita in the forest, offering personalized food and wine experiences.
Photo by Bethany Mollenkoff
Given those roads, a visitor would be wise to hire a local guide. The next morning, we meet Karina Campos, the owner of boutique agency Wine Eat and Travel. A Guadalajara native, Campos was drawn to the Valle in 2020 by its landscapes and sense of possibility and community.
I was delighted to learn that one of her tours showcases women winemakers. Some of the most interesting Baja wines I’d tasted in Mexico City were produced by female vintners, such as Lulú Martínez Ojeda of Bruma. “Women are becoming quite a force in the Valle,” says Campos, as she drives us to the area of San Antonio de Las Minas to meet Verónica Santiago, admired on both sides of the border for her elegant bottlings.
A graceful former dancer, Santiago greets us on the cypress-fringed grounds of her winery, Mina Penélope. “With just 2,000 cases a year, we are tiny but mighty!” she says. Like Pérez Castro’s family, hers started their viticulture after buying some acres to enjoy retirement. While her mother—who ran a tortilla business in Ensenada—planted vines back in 2007, Santiago studied enology in Australia and fell for biodynamic farming; at Mina Penélope, water canals capture and redirect water, and Santiago rebuilds and replenishes soil through composting and cover crops. “All our production is manual,” she notes, stepping gingerly as she leads us around her tiny facility past an old-fashioned basket press. Santiago’s husband, Nathan Malagón, runs the vineyard with a team while Santiago focuses on the laboratory and wine production. The pressing has just ended, and the air is pungent with grape must.
Veronica Santiago, one of Valle de Guadalupe’s most respected winemakers, is known for her refined palate and dedication to quality. Her wines are crafted exclusively from her organically grown vineyards, nestled in a secluded area of the valley’s rugged landscape.
Photo by Bethany Mollenkof
Santiago improvises a tasting table among the tanks and hoses. She has us sample an “amber” sauvignon blanc with seductive apricot notes, fermented in stainless steel for 10 days with skin contact. Next we twirl and sip an aromatic, unorthodox méthode champenoise sparkling wine she produces from Italian aglianico grapes instead of the predictable champagne varietals. “The Valle doesn’t really have a signature grape,” Santiago says. “We’re still experimenting, evolving. But my dream is for us to be known as pioneers of sustainability. We are willing to sacrifice production for longevity and what we believe is the greater good of our environment.”
Another star female vintner joins us later for lunch at Villa Torél, a farm-to-table restaurant opened by chef Alfredo Villanueva in 2019 on the idyllic grounds of the Santo Tomás winery. As we settle around a panoramic garden table flanked by wild lavender bushes, 32-year-old Silvana Pijoan appears like a badass poster child of the next generation: bright red T-shirt over bicycle shorts, tattooed arms cradling bottles.
“Well, many first-generation winemakers had daughters!” she laughs, when I ask why the Valle has so much female talent. “There’s simply a lot of us,” she adds, dunking crusty bread into a tureen of mussels in a puckery escabeche sauce.
The youngest of three daughters, Pijoan, like Santiago, studied dance, but eventually ended up training as a sommelier and then working for Vinos Pijoan, the winery her father founded in 2002—“as a cure” she chuckles, “for dad’s midlife crisis.”
The Valle is often called Mexico’s Napa Valley. But it’s really an anti-Napa of sorts—rugged, often anarchic, zero expensive boutiques. “Yet for the longest time winemakers here were into the same Napa-style clichés,” Pijoan tells us. “Crisp whites, big, bold reds, blah, blah.” She pauses to tuck some crab salad into a pita. “But now younger people are having fun and doing some pretty wild things,” she says.
Pijoan herself is making outstanding natural wines alongside her dad’s more conservative bottlings. When she uncorks a white irreverently named La Poubelle, French slang for “trash can,” I’m smitten. The lightly oxidated small-parcel sauvignon blanc, allowed some skin contact before being fermented in oak, pairs splendidly with our rosy slabs of raw bluefin tuna and rhubarb kimchi served with blue corn tostadas. Ditto the massive sweet roasted carrots with duck jus and citrus cream from Villanueva’s whimsical menu.
Left: Silvana Pijoan is a second-generation winemaker crafting wines at her family’s estate, Pijoan, in Ensenada. Raised by winemaker Pau Pijoan, she learned every step from grape to glass and eventually convinced her father to start bottling natural wines; Right: Villa Torél has a Bib Gourmand mention in the Michelin guide for its contemporary take on Mexican cuisine.
Photo by Bethany Mollenkof
As we taste a sweet-herbaceous vermouth that Pijoan (along with her sister and father) created in part to solve a waste issue—utilizing cloudy grape juice left over from winemaking—the conversation turns to the climate-changed future. Two recent years of rains have given some relief after harrowing periods of drought. “But we need to keep looking for grapes that adapt,” Pijoan says.
Like other winemakers here, she’d been experimenting with planting misión, a vigorous, drought-resistant varietal that happens to be the very first grapevine introduced to the Americas by Spanish missionaries. Pijoan used it in her 2023 Vino Pelón, which she opens for us, a fruity-smoky red made from a field blend that also includes syrah, grenache, and muscatel. “It’s a wine of many layers and characters that really represents what we do in the Valle,” Pijoan says. And it’s the kind of French-Spanish varietal blend that could exist only in the Valle, where there are no appellation rules or other regulatory red tape to interfere with the winemakers’ playful experiments.
For our last few days in the Valle, we move to Casa 8, an eight-room ecoretreat opened in 2015 by Bruma Wine Resort group. The hotel’s naturalistic design of rough stone and repurposed wood is by the Baja-based architect Alejandro D’Acosta (brother of local winemaker Hugo D’Acosta), much esteemed in Mexico for his poetic use of recycled materials. One of the Valle’s most reproduced images is of the D’Acosta-designed Bruma winery building.
Lourdes ‘Lulu’ Martinez Ojeda, winemaker and partner at Bruma, mastered her craft over a decade at Château Brane-Cantenac in Margaux, France. At Bruma, she specializes in small-batch, minimal-intervention wines designed to complement the local cuisine, capturing the true essence of the Valle.
Photo by Bethany Mollenkof
We head there for a tasting our last afternoon in the Valle—slightly spooked by signs warning of rattlesnakes but excited to meet its enologist, Lulú Martínez Ojeda, whose wines I’ve admired in Mexico City. “The space is very Tim Burton, no?” says Martínez Ojeda, leading us into the theatrical circular underground barrel room that looks vaguely ritualistic. The stupendous tree trunk jutting up through the middle? “It’s from a dead 300-year-old oak Alejandro brought back to life this way,” she says. “Symbolic of the Valle, perhaps?”
Upstairs, outside of the tasting room windows, the oak tree’s twisted sculptural branches double dramatically in a reflecting pool. We try Martínez Ojeda’s Bruma Ocho sangiovese rosé that’s on the list at The French Laundry, and she reminisces about growing up among her great-grandmother’s vineyards near Ensenada. She returned to the Valle in 2014 after a decade of winemaking at Château Brane-Cantenac, a blue-chip estate in Bordeaux. “Bordeaux is so important, so magical, but also static somehow,” she says. “People would constantly ask if I was a daughter of a winemaker—or sister or lover.” She opens her Bruma Bastardo next, a very anti-Bordeaux “bastard” blend of mourvèdre and montepulciano. “And here?” she says. “We have no hereditary weight, no burdens of history. Girls are happy to get super involved—and nobody stops them. Even in a macho country like Mexico.
“So what is our identity here?” Martínez Ojeda muses, corkscrew in hand. “Maybe it’s the liberty from having an identity? Freedom to experiment and innovate, to move forward quickly and happily.”
Chef David Castro Hussong and pastry chef Maribel Aldaco Silva founded Fauna in 2017 after years of traveling and working around the world. Born and raised in Ensenada, Castro long dreamed of honoring his hometown’s ingredients. Today, the couple crafts ever-evolving, experimental menus that celebrate the seasonality and richness of the local region.
Photo by Bethany Mollenkof
I ponder her words that night at the restaurant Fauna. Opened in 2017 by chef David Castro Hussong—an alum of Eleven Madison Park, Noma, and Blue Hill, and the region’s most energetic culinary ambassador—Fauna helped put the Valle on the radar of international foodies, joining such pioneering local restaurants as Finca Altozano from Tijuana star chef Javier Plascencia, and Deckman’s En El Mogor from European-trained U.S. chef Drew Deckman. “Our visitors are still mostly Mexicans,” Castro Hussong says. “Plus Americans looking for fun. Because American wine regions? They can be a little . . . over-structured . . . boring?”
All around us laughter gusts toward the repurposed wood ceiling as large, mostly Mexican groups offer toasts at rough-hewn communal tables. Ours features platters of fire-smoked broccoli in a green puree of aromatic chiltepin chilies that Castro Hussong grows in a potager right outside, and pearlescent Ensenada scallops in a black sauce of charred eggplant. The dishes keep coming: oysters in a bright aguachile , a ceviche of sea snails in a dusky-sweet salsa macha. We fill blue corn tortillas with marrow that we scoop from large beef bones and mash with blackened roasted carrots, dabbing it with habanero salsa that even Castro Hussong warns is “a little explosive.”
An Ensenada native whose local family roots go back generations, Castro Hussong has gathered several exceptional women for our dinner tonight, including his mother, the artist Estela Hussong, and his wife, Maribel Aldaco Silva, the award-winning pastry chef behind Fauna’s desserts. The grand dame of Mexican winemaking, Natalia Badan, who grew up at Rancho El Mogor, the vineyard and organic farm founded by her Swiss-French parents, arrives with a bottle of “humble” chasselas. She makes it from the Swiss grapes her brother planted decades ago—“a romantic dream of his” that thrived in the Valle soil.
“Twenty years ago,” says Badan, a passionate environmental crusader, “I and others were a bunch of visionaries with our own dream of creating Mexican wine here. There was so much solidarity; we worked for this goal like ambassadors, teaching anyone who wanted to join our movement. It was a beautiful moment, and Mexican people were extremely responsive and accepted us generously. Annow?” Her voice trails off into the dinnertime din. “Now,” she resumes, “we’ve been discovered. Tourism came, and with it, developers. Everyone wants a piece of our valley. But”—she gestures at Castro Hussong and Aldaco Silva— “we still have a strong, beautiful community here. And we trust our young generation, who are working so hard and giving their hearts.”
We raise our glasses to that.
Where to Eat, Drink, and Stay in Valle de Guadalupe
Left: an octopus and suadero taco at Lunario; Right: Banyan Tree Veya spans 16 acres.
Photos by Bethany Mollenkof
Valle de Guadalupe lies less than two hours south of San Diego by car. The best times to visit are spring and fall, and because the roads here are famously rustic and maze-like, it’s best to hire a local travel advisor such as Wine Eat and Travel or work with a member of Afar’s Travel Advisory Council to help plan your trip.
Where to stay
The 30 modernist villas of Banyan Tree Veya Valle de Guadalupe—each with a plunge pool and a fireplace—were designed by celebrated Mexican architect Michel Rojkind to harmonize with the property’s 16 acres of hillside landscape. Opened in 2024, this wellness resort from the Singapore-based luxury hospitality group draws on Asian traditions to tune up guests’ serenity and offers treatments such as Qi Body Flow at its expansive holistic spa. The on-site winery, Pictograma, specializes in grenache grapes and is housed in a striking multivault structure inspired by the Valle’s Spanish mission past.
A stay at Bruma Wine Resort offers three sustainability-minded, stylish accommodation options spread over its acreage. Casa 8 consists of eight guest rooms set in a charming desert garden; Casa Montaña comprises two sleek four-room villas overlooking a pond and vineyard; and in Ático’s industrial-chic 17 rooms above the Mercado Bruma restaurant and retail complex, you wake to the aromas of coffee and freshly baked conchas (sweet breads) made by Maribel Aldaco Silva, regarded as Latin America’s best pastry chef.
High along a boulder-studded slope, the 10 Mira Earth Studios, opened as a hotel in 2023, are like luxury screening rooms for sweeping Valle panoramas of vine plots and ranging hills. Their platform-decks’ sunken hot tubs are perfect for stargazing. The ecochic rooms have rammed-earth walls, green roofs, and earth-tone decor. The many thoughtful amenities include s’more kits for the firepit out on the deck, and fragrant toiletries from Baja Botanica.
Where to eat
In 2017 powerhouse Baja chef Javier Plascencia opened Animalón, which recently earned a Michelin star. Book a table (open seasonally from April to November) under a massive oak tree for the chef’s inventive six- or nine-course tasting menus featuring dishes such as roast duck with a complex guava mole. Wine pairings by sommelier Lauren Plascencia are a must.
Another recent Michelin star went to Conchas de Piedra from U.S. chef Drew Deckman, a Valle pioneer behind the restaurant Deckman’s En El Mogor. At this shellfish-forward spot on the grounds of Casa de Piedra winery, responsibly sourced Baja bivalves come dressed with creative flourishes and are matched with sparkling wines from vintner Hugo D’Acosta.
Currently number 17 of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants in Latin America, Fauna serves chef David Castro Hussong’s reimagined campfire cuisine around large communal tables, with many ingredients grown right outside. Castro Hussong’s more casual Bruma Wine Garden, set indoors amid live olive trees with views of the vineyards, is famous for creatively topped sourdough pizzas and a breakfast sea urchin croissant.
Also on the 50 Best in Latin America list is the charming Villa Torél on the grounds of Santo Tomás winery. Chef Alfredo Villanueva conjures eclectic dishes with local seafood and produce presented on grandmotherly china. Mondays there’s a popular event called Liernes, featuring inexpensive set menus and a DJ.
Greenhouse-like Lunario on the Lomita winery property has a Michelin Green Star for chef Sheyla Alvarado, whose four- and six-course tasting menus romance Baja seafood and produce from the restaurant’s farm. The wine list features bottlings from Lomita and its sister winery, Finca La Carrodilla.
Wineries to visit
Founded in 2005 by British expats Eileen and Phil Gregory, Vena Cava draws visitors both for its wines and for its bravura sustainable architecture by Alejandro D’Acosta; behold the ceiling of upturned reclaimed fishing boats. Food truck Troika serves everything from Mayan pumpkin dip to banoffee pie, thick with bananas and caramel. Bruma is another architectural tour de force by D’Acosta, with an underground barrel room tent-poled by an oak tree trunk. The scene is set for Bordeaux- trained enologist Lulú Martínez Ojeda’s expressive wines. Reserve a tour here.
Come to Mina Penélope’s beautiful property for winemaker Verónica Santiago’s vivacious natural wines and her amber sauvignon blanc. Stay for lunch at the vineyard-to-table outdoor restaurant Malva, run by celebrated chef Roberto Alcocer, who is also behind the Michelin-starred restaurant Valle in Oceanside, California.
One of the first fully certified organic estates in Mexico, Finca La Carrodilla makes delicious chenin blancs and syrahs. Reserve a late-afternoon session in the upstairs tasting room, order cheese and charcuterie, and watch the glowing sun set on the hills.
