The shop is closed this week, reopening on Saturday, so we can work hard to keep the good wines coming. If you’re from Texas, and a wine drinker, then you’ve probably known for a while that Texas makes wine – and some darn good wine too! But many people outside of our great state have no idea. On that same note, many people do not know that Mexico makes wine – and some darn good wine. We had the pleasure of enjoying a few delicious bottles on a trip to Cabo last year, and decided to focus a bit on learning more about wines from Mexico, and potentially including some at the shop, as a New World wine in one of our flights. This is just one example of a small-group trip that we offer, and you can join us on in the future.
I’ll recap our trip over the next few days, and maybe you’ll learn something new about an under appreciated wine region that’s not too far from us. Because my husband enjoys driving, we flew direct from Austin into San Diego, and rented a small SUV to drive south. Let me say here that my mother is always nervous when we take a trip to Mexico, and I admit, I didn’t tell her we were driving down, until after we safely returned home. The drive was truly only about half an hour from the airport, and there we were, in Tijuana, Mexico. The city is more metropolitan than I expected, and we only took one wrong turn as we navigated streets through heavy rain. The entire drive south to Ensenada is along the coast, but because of the rain, it wasn’t as picturesque as I had been looking forward to. We chose a hotel resort and golf course that is about 20 minutes north of Ensenada, chosen strictly for the golf, to be honest. It was a two hour drive total time, with no hiccups and the ocean viewed, through the rain, to our right the entire time.
After checking in to the hotel, we sat down for dinner as the only guests in the restaurant. We don’t speak Spanish, and the staff was very accommodating, so we communicated just fine. My ‘Lobster’ was actually Langostino, which still has all the flavors of a Lobster, but is much smaller and frankly harder to eat. Regardless, it was delicious, as I enjoyed it with a glass of Cava, and my husband scarfed down his steak with grilled shrimp.
I learned, the resort of Bajamar was built in 1972 and has not had much in the way of remodeling since. The community is a large portion of expats, sprinkled among folks from California and other areas of Mexico with vacation homes here. The hotel within the community is a large square structure with a courtyard in the center and rooms lining all four sides. The room was spacious with a nice Saltillo tile on the floor, two double beds with sparkling white linens, a breakfast table and chairs in the corner, and a comfortable arm chair. The bathroom was large, with hand painted tiles, however, the bathtub was plagued with rust in several areas, which took away from the charm a bit. I was pleased to see a sign announcing rooms are being updated. The construction noise was only during the day, when we were gone, and was never a bother. I’ll be excited to see what they do to update things. But, for now, its been a long day, and time to catch so shut eye.