San Diego Metropolitan - San Diego Scene

In 1791, Jesuit priests established the “Mision de Santo Tomas” in Baja California, about 90 miles south of present day San Diego. They brought and planted vines of grapes named “uva mision” (mission grape), and produced the first wines in the Californias.

In 1834, Dominican priests founded the “Mision de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe del Norte,” about 70 miles south of San Diego. This was the last mission established in the Californias and the one that functioned the least time. But the valley retains the abbreviated name “Valle de Guadalupe.” Today the valley produces about 90 percent of Mexico’s wines, many winning international recognition. The valley was blessed as one of the rare places in the world where premium wine grapes can be grown.

The road to the present wasn’t easy for the valley and its wines. In 1857, after Mexico’s War of Reform, the Catholic Church was stripped of its land holdings, which included the missions in Lower California that was left to Mexico after the U.S.-Mexico war. All church property became the property of the state. The government sold the former lands of the Mision de Santo Tomas to a private group, which established the Bodegas de Santo Tomas in 1888.

Nothing notable happened in the Valle de Guadalupe until 1904, when a group of 100 Russian families settled the area. The group belonged to a pacifist religious group which abandoned Russia to avoid its men being conscripted into the Czarist army.

The Russians bought several hundred acres, dedicating a good portion to planting vines producing grapes for wine, raisins and for sale as fruit. Others who came later followed their example, and more and more grapevines were planted.

The wines from Santo Tomas had by then acquired a good reputation, but sales of Mexican wines were dormant, as wine drinkers preferred French, German, Italian and Spanish wines, although they were exorbitantly priced.

Casa Madero, the oldest winery in the Western Hemisphere, didn’t until recently even bother with the Mexican domestic market. Instead, it exported most of its nearly 400,000-case annual production to the United States, England, Germany, Holland, France, Switzerland and Belgium.

Casa Pedro Domecq, long established in Valle de Guadalupe, is better known for other products, such as Presidente Brandy, the world’s best selling brandy. It is now also producing higher quality wines. When L.A. Cetto made a significant entry into the valley, it started to acquire fame. Now the two wineries account for nearly 75 percent of all wine production in the valley.

In the 1980s, as the popularity and sale of quality wine grew in the United States, and California’s wines began to be recognized for their excellence, Valle de Guadalupe came to the attention of a new breed of Mexican entrepreneur. Recognizing the enviable weather and soil conditions in the Guadalupe Valley, a group from Mexico City decided to invest.

Monte Xanic (pronounced: sha-neeck) was the first. In the early 1980s it established a vineyard next to the town of Zarco, about 25 miles northeast of Ensenada, where the Russian immigrants had settled and many of their descendants still live. The first wines were released in 1988 to immediate acclaim.

The success led to a friend of the owners — Mexico city entrepreneur Ernesto Alvarez-Morphy Camou — to fall in love with the idea of producing such high quality wines. He purchased 500 hectares (slightly over 1,000 acres) in the valley, and taking his mother’s maiden name, he created Chateau Camou. The vineyard planted only 100 acres the first year, adding around 50 acres each year thereafter.

The results have won national and international renown. In France’s “Challenge International de Vin,” the Chateau Camou label won the silver medal in 1998 and 1999, and the bronze in 2000. From Belgium’s “Concours Mondial de Bruxelles” it took the Great Gold Medal in 2000. Additionally, in 1998, 1999, and 2000 it has won either the silver or bronze from the “Wines of the Americas” in competition with the best wine producing U.S. states, and from the other Western Hemisphere countries.

Likewise Camou’s two other labels, “Viñas de Camou” and “Flor de Guadalupe,” have won gold, silver and bronze medals in France, Belgium and the United States.

The success of Monte Xanic and Chateau Camou resulted in opening the door to an increase in exporting quality Mexican wines, to expansion of other wineries and a sprouting of new ones throughout the valley.

The best news is that most of the Guadalupe Valley wineries are open to the public. Some have a minimal charge and require an appointment.