29/09/2026
W**e has been made in the valley south of Ensenada since the 1790s, which means Baja California had a w**e industry before the United States had a Constitution in practice.
The Dominicans founded Mision Santo Tomas de Aquino on April 24, 1791, established by Jose Loriente in Kumeyaay territory. The mission moved twice before settling in the Santo Tomas valley, where two or three small springs crossed good ground. From the late 1790s the friars planted grapes and pressed w**e for the sacrament, which is how viticulture reached this part of the peninsula at all.
The mission was secularized in 1833 and finally abandoned around 1849, by which time only about forty Indigenous residents remained. The vines outlived the institution. In 1888, Francisco Andonegui and Miguel Ormart bought the old mission holdings and turned them into a commercial operation, Bodegas de Santo Tomas, generally considered the oldest w**ery in Mexico.
Today the vineyards spread across several Baja valleys and the tasting rooms sit in downtown Ensenada, less than two hours from the San Diego border crossing. The mission itself is only crumbling foundations, plowed over for a century and a half.
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