North Baja Sales

Written By Lorena Mancilla – San Diego Reader

Imagine a valley filled with vineyards surrounded by olive trees. The weather is dry and warm and there’s hardly any wind. There are only a couple of paved roads and people mostly walk or drive on dirt roads bordered with shrubbery. The sounds and sights of the country are subtle: birds, mountains, desert plants — wait, there’s also drama: a turkey vulture devours a squirrel. Oh, well.

Valle De Guadalupe

One could be standing in California or it could be Italy, but this place is Mexico; actually, it’s Ensenada, but without the breeze of the Pacific. The place is Valle de Guadalupe, a region with a Mediterranean climate where 80 percent of Mexican wine is produced. The valley is the same size as Napa Valley, but Napa has 40,000 acres of vineyards. Compared to other regions, Mexico’s production is still small. In all of the different wine-producing regions of Baja, including San Vicente Valley, Guadalupe Valley, and Santo Tomas Valley, only 6200 acres are used for wine production.

The history of Guadalupe Valley has been touched superficially by few historians; the original population was indigenous, mainly Kumeyaay. There were also Dominican missionaries, but they didn’t stay for long. In 1904, a group of Molokan Russians colonized parts of the valley and with them came the first grapevines.

During the 1950s, groups of farmers demanded farming land from the government and created ejidos. The ejidos were groups that collectively owned land, which was given to them by the government in order to promote agriculture. At the beginning of the ejido era in the valley, they grew alfalfa, wheat, and other crops. In 1927, an Italian named Angelo Cetto came to Baja California and started to explore the valley. He grew different kinds of grapes and founded a company that mainly focused on the production of brandy. In the 1940s, Cetto produced one commercial wine, but it wasn’t until the late 1980s that the company began concentrating on wine. The serious wine industry in Baja is fairly young, 20 years old. read more »