Baja Fresh: A Guide to Mexico's Burgeoning Wine Region

Born in León, Mexico, and trained in France, winemaker Hugo D’Acosta opened his Casa de Piedra (vinoscasadepiedra.com) winery in 1997, in a fieldstone building designed by his architect brother, Alejandro. In addition to making a spicy Cabernet-Tempranillo blend and a full-flavored un-oaked Chardonnay here, D’Acosta, who has been described as “the Mexican Mondavi,” is a partner in several other local wineries, including the forthcoming Bruma (rooms, from $290; bruma.mx) resort and winery, backed in part by the Auberge Resorts’ Harmon family. Until this 40-room hotel and residence project opens in 2019, guests stay in Casa Ocho, the owners’ quarters—seven rustic rooms with fieldstone walls and raw-wood ceilings. D’Acosta consults for still more wineries and oversees La Escuelita de Oficios el Porvenir, a “little school” of winemaking that seems to have trained half the valley’s vignerons.

D’Acosta was the original winemaker at the valley’s first real showplace winery and inn, Adobe Guadalupe (rooms, from $275; adobeguadalupe.com), opened in 1999 by the late Southern California banker Donald Miller and his Dutch-born wife, Tru. Today it’s known mostly for its reds (the Cabernet-Syrah Serafiel is particularly good), but it also produces bottles of rosé and Chardonnay. Dinner is served in the salon, with handsomely set tables and a nightly menu that might include mussel bisque, a salad of just-picked greens from its garden, and simply sautéed fish from the morning’s catch. The vineyard’s Moorish-style adobe hacienda houses six simply furnished rooms. Outside the hacienda’s walls are a swimming pool, riding stables, and meditation garden. There’s a food truck dispensing salads, sandwiches, and tapas.

Behind Adobe Guadalupe there’s a campestre where Constantino Dal Bon—whose father, Angelo, runs the highly regarded Tre Galline (52-646/190- 6298), a seasonal Italian restaurant nearby—serves grilled meats and wood-oven-fired pizzas.

Like Tru Miller, expats Phil and Eileen Gregory have a six-room inn, La Villa del Valle (rooms, from $275; lavilladelvalle.com), and a winery, Vena Cava (venacavawine.com), which focuses on Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc. Designed by Alejandro D’Acosta, the winery has a roof made from old fishing boats, overturned to create domed ceilings, and some of the walls are formed from old bottles. The two-level inn looks like a manor house in Tuscany. It’s surrounded by lavender fields, has a wraparound terrace, and six guest rooms with Oaxacan textiles.

There’s a food truck called Troika parked outside Vena Cava winery that is famous for its suckling-pig tacos. 52-646/156-8030.

Serious diners, though, should reserve a table at the on-site restaurant, Corazón de Tierra. Chef Diego Hernández harvests much of what he serves from the inn’s organic vegetable garden and produces some of the valley’s most sophisticated cooking—a six-course, fixed-price dinner nightly, including such fare as smoked yellowtail and avocado tostadas, sea urchin and oyster risotto, and fennel ice cream with strawberries. corazondetierra.com.

In 2001 the valley’s first serious restaurant, Laja, was opened—before anyone had ever heard of Baja Mediterranean—by chef Jair Téllez, who once worked for Daniel Boulud. Laja is no campestre. It’s a comfortable trattoria-like restaurant with wood floors, beam ceilings, and oversize wooden tables, serving two four-course, fixed-price menus (which can be combined into a single eight-course one) that change frequently. Some of the typical dishes include beet salad with homemade “rancho” dressing and fennel vinaigrette, grilled octopus with aioli and wisps of crisp-fried onion, and grilled quail with puréed leeks and caramelized scallions. lajamexico.com.

Ten minutes down the road is Silvestre—meaning “wild”—run by the magnificently mustachioed Benito Molina and his wife and cochef, Solange Muris, proprietors of Ensenada’s acclaimed Manzanilla. This summertime, cash-only campestre is so informal it makes Finca Altozano look like a downtown dining room. Diners sit at communal picnic tables set with plastic lace place mats; the open-air kitchen is fueled entirely by wood. And yet the food is varied and superb: flank steak tacos with black beans, pork loin tostadas with homemade ricotta and pickled cactus, and crispy-skinned rock cod. 52-646/175-7073.

Javier Plascencia, one of the valley’s best chefs, runs the four-bedroom house and pool, six miles down the road from his Finca Altozano restaurant. It can be rented by the room or in its entirety. Rooms, from $215; fincaladivina.com.

One of the valley’s most popular restaurants is Deckman’s at Cavas del Mogor winery. Chef-proprietor Drew Deckman is a Georgia native who worked under legendary French chefs Paul Bocuse and Jacques Maximin and won a Michelin star while cooking in Germany. Working year-round at an elaborate complex of outdoor grills while diners sit outdoors beneath the pine trees or in a “dining room” with a corrugated tin roof and hay-bale walls, Deckman, a serious fisherman, draws on the local catch (and on produce raised at Cavas del Mogor) for dishes like rock cod ceviche with fermented habanero chilies and tomatillos, raw spot prawns with jalapeño vinaigrette, and roasted pork jowl with smoked octopus and baby vegetables. deckmans.com.

While morning meals of homemade granola, fresh fruit, and farmyard egg dishes are common at the valley’s B&Bs, the best breakfasts are widely considered to be those served at La Cocina de Doña Esthela. Here, Blanca Esthela Martínez Bueno dishes up heroic portions of huevos rancheros with grilled sausages, shredded dried beef scrambled with eggs from her farm, and the house specialty, borrego tatemado, mildly spicy wood-roasted lamb (yes, for breakfast) accompanied by an endless supply of warm flour tortillas turned out on a griddle in the dining room. Doña Esthela’s is not a campestre and it’s not Baja Mediterranean in style, but it’s yet another example of what makes the Valle de Guadalupe. 52-646/156-8453.

Billing itself as an antiresort with no cars, TVs, or phones (guests use walkie-talkies), the property has 22 one- and two-bedroom ecolofts, plus a restaurant and bar, winery, and infinity pool. Rooms from $250; www.grupoencuentro.com.mx.