Cheese and Biscuits on Tour - Baja California and the Valle de Guadelupe, Mexico (part 2)

The wineries of Day Three of the Valle de Guadalupe trip conspired to somehow be yet more startling. First of the day (after a brief sidestep to sleepy Guadalupe village to pick up some handmade wooden toys to keep baby Daisy occupied during the forthcoming wine-fest) was Adobe Guadalupe, another outfit specialising mainly in high-end reds hovering around the US$30 mark.

The tasting was relaxed and very enjoyable, and the wines suitably silky smooth, but Adobe is almost as well known in the area for its Aztec horse breeding programme, and its food truck serving interesting Mediterranean-Mexican fusion dishes such as this “Picosito” of beef tongue, prawns and potatoes. Plus even without the gorgeous wines and fine foods, it would be impossible not to enjoy the time spent in this fragrant Mediterranean garden as the horses ran about in the nearby fields.

Decantos Vinicola was perhaps the single most impressive facility of the entire trip, and there was some serious competition on that front. Situated high up on the northern side of the Valle, with extraordinary views over the nearby vineyards and down towards Guadelupe village, this monolithic modernist edifice, with acres of steel and glass contrasting with organic details such as a tasting bar made from varnished driftwood, is a true temple to winemaking. Their claim to fame is that the whole winemaking process is powered by nothing more than gravity, with no mechanical pumping, and so the various stages of the process happen at different elevations. Which I’m sure is all very clever but mainly means you look down on the wine vats from viewing galleries at ground level, turning the whole thing into a special kind of theatre.

Back down the valley and to another modernist masterpiece, Vinos Emeve. So new they were still installing the spot lighting when we arrived, here we eschewed the usual tasting flight and instead ordered two glasses of a Chardonnay, Sauv Blanc and Viognier blend called Isabella, which had been specifically recommended by the lovely people at Adobe. It was stately and refined, and tasted all the better for the surroundings.

I worry about repeating myself, but in all honesty it felt like each next spot on the trip was more impressive than the last. And if you were ever tempted to take the superb wines, breathtaking views, engaging service and architectural marvels for granted, there’d be some extra wonderful twist around the corner, such as the Conchas de Piedra seafood bar overlooking the Casa de Piedra vineyard. Run by Drew Deckman, the chef whose restaurant we’d eaten at the night before, this beautiful open-plan kitchen and bar was in fact the only place where we tried sparkling wine the whole trip (the very nice and crisp Espuma de Piedra), which is just as well as I can think of nothing better to serve with the selection of Baja oysters that they offer from the daily menu. Oh yes, and the dressed local clam was great, too.

That evening, our dinner was at Finca Altozano, from our favourite Baja chef Javier Plascencia. We’d been to his high-end Tijuana spot Mision 19 a number of times, and never had less than a brilliant time, so we felt in safe hands in this mid-range bar and grill towards the centre of the Valle. The food was – as we’ve come to expect from this man – superb, leaning towards charcoal-roasted meats and fish but always with the Plascencia-style nods to international Meditteranean such as this plate of local mushrooms and a lovely soft baguette. A New York Strip steak was, as you can see, cooked beautifully with a great thick salty char containing soft, pink flesh inside. If you’re ever in this part of the world and have a chance to eat at any of his places (there’s a good number dotted around San Diego and northern Baja), just go for it. You won’t be disappointed.

It was the perfect end to the trip. In fact, it wasn’t quite the end, not yet, but I’m going to call it the end because it was the last place in the Valle de Guadalupe and I’m going to call it the end so we can end on a high note, because after we left the safety of our beloved Valle and returned to the Real World, well, things went downhill slightly.

There’s every chance you’re the kind of person who would take somewhere like Popotla in your stride, laugh off the hustlers and hawkers hassling you into their restaurants, enjoy the ear-splitting din from the enforced “entertainment”, make the most of what was a fairly grim-looking tray of deep-fried mystery seafood, and come away with your sanity intact. But I’m afraid I’m not one of those people. Popotla “Fishing Village” was my own personal nightmare; stressful, garish, smelly and – horror of horrors – cash only, and I couldn’t wait to get out of there. It was also surprisingly chilly, an unusual dense sea mist shrouding the place in dampness and providing an extra level of creepy end-of-the-pier weirdness. It was about as far from the refined, relaxed Valle de Guadalupe as you could go in the space of an hour, and made the forthcoming 4-hour wait in the Tijuana border crossing seem like a blessed relief in comparison. My advice is do not go to Popotla.

But I said I’d end on a high note and I will. I got the impression that the Valle de Guadalupe is on the cusp of serious international fame, yet we caught it at that magical moment where everything is ready – the stunning wineries, the wonderful restaurants – but is not yet overwhelmed with visitors or the kind of low-rent tourist tat (I’m looking at you, Puerta Nuevo and Popotla) that inevitably come when such fame finally lands. Beautiful, charming and so very easy to enjoy at every moment, it’s the kind of place in which you could easily spend weeks and yet still be discovering brand new vineyards and asadors every day, tucked away from public view on the dusty backroads that snake either side of the valley. It’s a rare and special place, and my only reservation about telling you about it is that I hope it doesn’t change too much when the word gets out. But when has that ever stopped me before?

Cheese and Biscuits on Tour - Baja California and the Valle de Guadelupe, Mexico (part 1)

The Valle de Guadalupe is a winemaking area in northern Mexico, about 45 minutes drive from the US border. No, I'd never heard about it either, but then that's hardly surprising given the miniscule profile Mexican wine has in the UK. When was the last time you saw anything from Mexico on a list? A quick CTRL+F of some of the largest lists in London (The Greenhouse, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, Le Gavroche, the Ledbury, Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester) unearths not a single bottle from that part of the world. Even Mestizo, London's most notable (and since the sad closure of Santo Remedio, best, though that's not saying much) Mexican restaurant has a grand total of one producer on its menu, L.A Cetto; from the Valle de Guadalupe, yes, but it's still hardly a ringing endorsement.

But then Mexican wine in London suffers from pretty much the same fate as its food - under-represented, under-appreciated, unloved. It's a near-impossible task to convince anyone from the UK brought up on Old El Paso fajitas (shudder), Las Iguanas chain restaurants (heave) and any number of high street burrito joints using those weirdly spunky boil-in-the-bag tortilla casings that Mexico has one of the most dynamic and sophisticated food cultures in the world, and that the dross sullying its fine name on our shores has about as much in common with real Mexican food as a bown of real Japanese ramen does to a Pot Noodle. But you'll have to take my word for it, Mexican food, and particularly the cuisine of Baja California, is endlessly rewarding and generous of spirit, with a style and personality all of its own.

Of course, like any part of the world making a good chunk of its living from tourism (and American tourism at that), there are certain traps - the Leicester and St Mark's Squares of Baja California - where generosity of spirit plays second fiddle to making a quick buck, and where touts roam the streets attempting to snare passing trade with outlandish offers. One of these places is Puerto Nuevo, our choice for a lunch stop on the way to the Valley, and home to Casa de Llangosta.

It wasn't that any of the food at Casa de Llangosta was bad, it just felt a bit polished and production-line, with none of the heart and soul of the food we were to experience for much of the rest of the trip (or indeed had been lucky enough to enjoy in the fabulous taco tour from last year). House clam chowder was decent, and the house salsa punchy and fresh (everywhere in Baja makes their own salsa for dipping tortilla chips, and each are as strikingly different to each other as you can imagine - some thick and earthy, some sharp and light, some mild, some painfully hot), but the main event, spiny lobsters, tasted suspiciously previously-frozen - bland and chewy - and the price per head of $40 for all of the above seemed pretty steep.

Still, no great harm done, and our next stop would soon put things right. We began our wineries tour at Liceaga, a medium-sized operation just off the main road near our AirBnB, whose rosado turned out to be the standout of the 4 or 5 wines that made up the $180 (that's $ for Mexican pesos, not American dollars - same symbol for both, confusingly). Charming service, full-bodied wines and beautiful surroundings would turn out to be a feature of more or less every vineyard in the Valley we visited, and Liceaga set the standard early on with all these things in abundance.

Next was El Cielo, a vast, multi-million-dollar eco-winery and vineyard in the north of the valley, whose 'tastings' began with a tour of the temperature-controlled cellars and a lavishly produced introductory video. Normally I'd shy away from anything so corporate, but it was certainly interesting to see how much money had been ploughed into the Valley in recent years, and you could see where it had all gone - the wines were refined and elegant. A chardonnay was our favourite.

Unbeknownst to us, 2nd November was Mexican Day of the Dead, a day where the cemeteries of Ensenada (the regional capital of sorts) turn into giant carnivals and the whole population turns up to drink and be merry. Sadly, with the populace otherwise engaged there wasn't a huge number of people left to run the restaurants of the Valle de Guadalupe, and having decided against the rather expensive steakhouse attached to El Cielo, we soon realised that, well, there weren't a great deal of other options. Eventually after a rather fraught chase through closed restaurant after closed restaurant as the night closed in, we ended up by the side of the road eating hot dogs from a stall. And whether it was our sheer relief to have found anywhere open, or because the Mexicans generally know how to make the most out of any given foodstuff, or both, these hot dogs were pretty much the best any of us had eaten in our lives. I'm just sad I don't know what they guy selling them was called or even how to find him again. Still here is where he was that night in case you're ever in the area yourself and fancy trying the World's Best Hot Dogs.

Day Two began with a very traditional Mexican breakfast at the charming Casa Lupita, hidden (and I really do mean hidden) in the maze of dust roads surrounding the AirBnB. One of the more astonishing things about the Valle de Guadelupe is that aside from a few vineyards and restaurants positioned on the main strips, everything is tucked away down unlikely potholed backroads, vaguely signposted if you're lucky but more often than not just relying on word of mouth directions. More than once we'd given up on a particular recommendation because the increasingly tiny and cratered tracks couldn't possibly have led to anywhere with a water supply, only to give it another go later and realise that just a few bumpy minutes more we'd turn the corner to a huge, swanky vineyard with gravel drive and pretty outdoor furniture.

Anyway Lupita was great, from the sopes to start to the generous combination plates of chilaquiles rojos, machacha, frijoles and fried potatoes which I think I ate about 10% of before admitting defeat. Everything was fresh, vibrant and generous both in the sense of the spirit of generosity and the more tangible sense of the portion size, and served with an easy charm.

Ensenada is enough of a tourist attraction to have the odd strip of dive bars and shops full of jokey tat, but enough of a living, breathing coastal town to have proper, grown-up restaurants and some interesting parks and museums. The fish market was worth a quick look but seemed a bit depleted, possibly due to the dia de los muertos celebrations the day before, but was on the way to our lunch spot of Muelle 3, a bright seafood bar near the harbour where we ate an interesting ceviche spiked with either soy or Maggie's sauce (we couldn't decide; either way it was very nice) and octopus with huitlacoche.

Back in the Valley again after the Ensenada jaunt, and fortified by a dip in the icy cold AirBnB swimming pool (it's the night-time temperatures that dictate the habitability of the pool, apparently, and night-times in the Valley in November are chilly), we trotted next door to another fantastically swanky vineyard tucked on an unlikely backroad called Tres Valles. Tastings here are held in a kind of treehouse above a carpet of dried grapes, and the vineyard grounds are decorated by huge metal animal sculptures by a local artist. Their wines, again leaning towards powerful reds like Cabernet Sauvignon, Tempranillo and Petit Syrah, were silky smooth, and being the only people in the place (again) we had all the time in the world to enjoy them.

We were clearly getting the hang of things now, and in stark contrast to the tribulations of the night before, dinner on day two was booked, recommended, and about as far away from a roadside hot dog stall as you could possibly imagine. Drew Deckman is a decorated American chef who's settled in Baja after various positions in restaurants around the world, and in this exquisite spot overlooking the Mogor vineyard serves exciting modern cuisine using ingredients from their own kitchen gardens, and fish and meat from the wider Baja peninsula.

It's easy to be dazzled by the surroundings at Deckman's even before you get to the food; there is no finer way to end the day than to watch the sun go down over the Valley, watching chefs busy themselves in the open garden kitchen and enjoying wine made from grapes growing on vines literally yards away. But fortunately, the food more than lived up to the incredible setting, from sensitively dressed local oysters, through ox tongue and percebes, grilled valley quail and sweet pickled veg. Only a rather dry pork belly course and the strange compulsion of the staff to rush us through dinner as fast as humanly possible (the whole thing was over in about 20 minutes) took the sheen off slightly. Still, look at that bloody view.

And we were only halfway through. Watch this space for part two.