After falling into the Ocean in San Diego, our next day was much less adventurous. Our ship (the Celebrity Solstice) took us down to Mexico’s Baja Peninsula to the town of Ensenada. It may come as a surprise, but one of the things that this region is known for is its wine. The Ville de Guadalupe (The Guadalupe Valley) is known as Mexico’s Napa Valley.
When talking to some people on the ship about this tour, they turned their noses up at it because Mexico isn’t known for its wine. The reason we don’t see Mexican wine in stores in the United States has nothing to do with the quality but more with the quantity that they produce. With such small growing regions, Mexico does not produce that much wine and most of what they do produce, the Mexican people consume.
Our tour took us to two different wineries, L.A. Cetto, and Casa de Doña Lupe. L.A. Cetto has been making wine in Mexico since 1928 and is probably one of the biggest wine production facilities we have ever toured. We tasted some of their mass-market wines and also some of their more high-end wines and everything we tried was on-par with the big American wineries for a fraction of the cost. Casa de Doña Lupe has a more home-spun feel to it and reminded me of a lot of the wineries we visit in Northern Michigan. Our tasting was outside among the vines while a local guitar player strummed a tune. After tasting at Doña Lupe we were able to browse their shop for wines as well as homemade jams and olive oils to take home.
One thing that is tough about a tour like this is that everything we tried was excellent and very inexpensive (a bottle from the reserve line from L.A. Cetto worked out to about $16), but traveling with two adults, you can only bring two bottles of wine across the border without paying duty so we were very limited in what we brought home.
We booked our wine-tasting tour through Shore Excursions Group. We have used them many times and have always had good results. They guarantee to get you back to the ship on time and they are much cheaper than booking through the cruise line.
We really fell in love with the Valle de Guadalupe and hope to return sometime and actually stay in the area. I guess I will have to add it to the list! Thanks for stopping by! To read more about this trip, check out the Cruising the Pacific Coast Trip Report. To read about some of our previous trips, visit my Trips Page. If you like my photos be sure to “like” my Facebook Page and follow me on Instagram! For my list of gadgets to make your travels easier, click here. To see inside my camera bag, check out my updated Gear Page.
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