San Antonio de las Minas

San Antonio de las Minas, also known as Villa de Juárez, is a rural settlement of 893 people (2020) at the southern tip of the Valle de Guadalupe, about 230 meters up and 25 km northeast of Ensenada. It heads a district of almost 112 km² bordering El Porvenir, Francisco Zarco, Real del Castillo, El Sauzal and La Misión, and Federal Highway 3 runs straight through it at the point where the wine road starts climbing into the valley.

The mines in the name were real. In 1830 a Kumiai man, Simón Rance, was granted 1,755 hectares here known as Rincón de los Encinos; his sister Loreto passed the land in 1851 to Amparo Maytorena Ruiz de Burton. Mines were reported in the area from 1846, and in 1857 a party of underfunded prospectors spent some six months on its 64 copper veins, which carried a little silver, shipping out around 100 tonnes of ore. Jorge Ryerson and three partners filed four more silver claims in 1879 with no better luck, and in 1880 the ranch passed to Luz Reina López.

These days the crop is grapes. Hugo D'Acosta, regarded as the pioneer of modern Mexican winemaking, founded Casa de Piedra here in 1997. At km 93, Myrna Liceaga's Viña de Liceaga has an oak grove and vineyards south of the highway where a local microclimate holds ripening back about a month, pushing harvest to the first week of October. At km 85.5 sits the El Mogor vineyard, where Drew Deckman cooks over open fire outdoors, growing most of his vegetables and buying fish only from Baja California. At km 94.7, inside the Bodegas Santo Tomás vineyards, Villa Torél has served sharing plates among lavender and citrus trees since 2019 and holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.