Sangría del Valle de Guadalupe

This sangria belongs to Baja California. Specifically to the Valle de Guadalupe, the narrow corridor of vineyards an hour east of Ensenada where the Pacific fog rolls in every morning, condenses over the vines, and gives the Cabernet and Tempranillo grown there a faint salinity you will not find in any other Mexican wine. Esto no es comida de un solo Mexico. Baja drinks differently than Oaxaca, than Yucatan, than the central valleys. This is the northwest, where the desert pours into the glass.

The wine is the recipe. Monte Xanic, L.A. Cetto, Adobe Guadalupe, any serious Valle red will do. Do not use a Spanish Rioja or a cheap supermarket Cabernet from somewhere else. You are not making Spanish sangria. You are making bajacaliforniana sangria, which means the wine has to come from those vineyards on the Pacific side of the Sierra de Juarez. The salinity is the entire point. Take it out and you have lost the dish.

The rest is restraint. Mexican brandy, not Spanish. Fresh orange and lime, not bottled juice. Piloncillo, not white sugar. Mexican limes, the small ones with thin yellow-green skin, not Persian limes from the supermarket. A pinch of sea salt from the Guerrero Negro salt flats further south on the peninsula, because Baja Sur and Baja Norte share a coastline and the salt belongs in the glass. Topo Chico at the end to lift the whole thing. No sugar bomb, no orange soda, no triple sec. Cada estado, su propia cocina, y su propia bebida.

I learned this version from a sommelier in Ensenada who poured it for me at three in the afternoon during the harvest in 2019. She said the sangria she grew up with in Spain was sweet and heavy. The one she made in Baja was dry and salty. The land told her what to do.