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COPYRIGHT 2001 Hiaring Company
Had an opportunity after harvest for a walkthrough and tasting at Chateau Camou, one of the wineries that is taking a leading role in establishing the credentials of Baja California as a producer of premium wines.
In 1985, a group of Mexican businessmen formed a partnership with the intended goal of making fine wine in Baja's Guadalupe Valley, a coastal region a few miles from the Pacific just east and north of Ensenada. They bought an existing vineyard that had been planted in the early 1930s and built a winery on a knoll overlooking the vineyards, which are mostly located in a box canyon snaking between two steep hills.
It's a beautiful spot. There had been rains a few weeks before and the desert mountains had responded with a bloom of green. On the drive to the bodega, which is at the end of a dirt road off Mex 2, the highway that runs from Ensenada to Tecate, we spotted a curious coyote watching us from the hillside. The turnoff to the winery is at the village of Francisco Zarco, which the locals call Guadalupe.
The valley was first settled by Russian immigrants early in the last century. They dry-farmed wheat and some still refer to the area as the Valle de Trigo, or Valley of Wheat. We didn't see...
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