Once I had posted my grades and turned in my office key, I began organizing the move in earnest. Downsizing came first: finding new homes for my books and donating horse tack, electronics, memorabilia and clothing. We met with builders to explore the option of purchasing a lot and having a home built to our specifications and we listed our house with a real-estate agent. In the middle of it all, however, with email inboxes full and long to-do schedules on my desk, I found myself boarding a plane for San Diego.
The first afternoon and evening were in some ways not too promising. The Courtyard Marriott, where the group assembled, is a typical business-oriented establishment: no sit-down restaurant but a bar/food service combo where items are ordered at the counter. We got in early and had lunch, which was only passable. Nothing to visit in the immediate vicinity: the Marriott was just one in an interminable row of motels. That evening the fourteen participants assembled in a meeting room where the tour leader, Luka Rangel, gave a very informative and clear overview of what we would experience. Our tour companions were quite diverse in ages, background, and ethnicities and, from their introductions, a very interesting group of people. We bonded very quickly, thanks in great part to Luka, who drew us all out. The only negative part was the catered dinner, which featured a tepid and disappointingly chewy lasagna. This made me wonder if the food in general would reach a higher level. I needn't have worried.
After crossing into Mexico (quite painlessly), our first stop was La Caja Gallery in Tijuana. Its mission is to bring art to the community, as proclaimed by its arresting façade (left). Inside, an equally arresting mural
(right). We met with the gallery owner, who explained the various outreach activities undertaken by the La Caja collective of artists and performers and walked us through the performance spaces under construction. After that stimulating tour, we were taken for lunch to Caesar's Restaurant, a Tijuana institution displaying countless photos of celebrities who have enjoyed its Caesar salad, supposed to have been invented there. Yes, the original recipe uses anchovy fillets, hooray. No, it doesn't include chicken.Our hotel in Ensenada was the Las Rosas Resort, a great improvement over the Marriott, though similarly located on a busy highway where there was no place to walk. The only English-language television news channel was Fox. Hard to watch it for more than fifteen minutes. However, our days were organized around long morning-to-late-afternoon excursions and two- to three-hour dinners, so we did not miss television at all.
In their lectures on the bus and on-site, Luka and her colleague and assistant Jasmin broadened the focus of the tour beyond viniculture and gastronomy--though there was plenty of information on those topics--to include the history of Mexico and Baja California and, most interesting of all to me, the ins and outs of current political disputes surrounding proposed development of the Guadalupe Valley. Like the Sonoita and Willcox wine districts in Arizona, the valley was originally a purely agricultural, cattle and produce farming area into which vineyards were introduced rather late. Because it is now so popular with tourists, developers want to build resorts there, and residents have had to mobilize to stop them. Luka, whose sympathies were obviously with those seeking to preserve the traditional character of the region, vividly described their struggles with the system. I was reminded of the fight my neighbors put up to stop the building of a high school on Snyder Road and changing the zoning around the Catalina Highway-Snyder intersection to commercial use.
This is not to say that the Guadalupe Valley farmers are reactionary. On the contrary, one of its leading oenologists, Hugo D'acosta, is the driving force behind La Escuelita, a winemaking school for prospective vintners. We tasted just two wines there, a white and a red, but both were markedly better than those offered at the next winery, Monte Xanic, an overly commercial establishment where the pourers recited canned scripts. Of all the wines we tasted (and there were eight winery visits overall), I would rank the wines of La Escuelita and Tres Mujeres the best, and those were, not surprisingly, the two places where the creative passion of the director or owner was most evident. Ivette of Tres Mujeres, who founded the winery with two friends, is also an accomplished ceramicist, and her cellar doubles as a tasting room and gallery. I learned something new about winemaking from her. There is more than one method of cultivation in use among the surrounding growers. All other factors being equal, the way the vines are trained affects the finished product.
As for food, our restaurant experiences were amazing. We had one four-course lunch at Laja, one of the top 50 restaurants in Latin America, which featured products from its own orchard, farm, and vineyard. The lettuce salad with beetroot and aged cheese was exceptional, as was the entrée of local lamb. All four courses were paired with Guadalupe Valley wines. We had another great lunch at Deckman's, located at the El Mogor winery, and a fine dinner at Ophelia in Ensenada--to which I would love to return, because I wasn't able to do justice to their dessert sampler. Still, the best meal of all was one we prepared ourselves. Under the direction of Chef Juan Hussong, we learned techniques of cooking Baja-Med dishes, which fuse traditional Mexican flavors with Mediterranean ingredients, and put together our own three-course dinner as a farewell celebration. This was a fitting conclusion to a program that worked on so many levels--intellectual, aesthetic, social, and sensual--and allowed me to relax and appreciate my surroundings for the first time in many months.
