Chef Luis Mota
By Ed Avis
When somebody orders a glass of Mexican wine at La Contenta Oeste in New York City, the server doesn’t just bring the glass of wine – he or she also brings the bottle, shows the customer the label, and describes the wine and winery.
“If they order a glass, we present the bottle so they can see it,” says Chef Luis Arce Mota, owner and executive chef of La Contenta and La Contenta Oeste. “That’s the way they get familiar with the brand, with the label.”
Chef Mota is an evangelist for Mexican wines. He remembers seeing his father and uncle drink Mexican wine in his uncle’s seafood restaurant in Mazatlan in the 1970s, and when he opened his first restaurant in New York in 2005, Mexican wines were on the menu. When he opened La Contenta Oeste last year, he committed himself to a serious Mexican wine list.
“I find Mexican wines kind of exciting,” he says. “For example in Baja, they can mix any grapes that grow well. I find wines with five different grapes. It’s like a mole recipe.”
His list includes familiar Mexican labels such as L.A. Cetto and Monte Xanic, and some smaller players, such as Casa Magoni and Fluxus.
Beer and tequila are naturally the predominant alcoholic spirits served in Mexican restaurants, but wine is on a growing percentage of Mexican restaurant menus. An el Restaurante review of the beverage menus of 96 Mexican restaurants that described themselves as “family, sit-down restaurants” revealed that 49 of them, or 51 percent, carry some wine on the menu. However, the majority of that wine is not from Mexico: Of Mexican restaurants that carry wine, less than one-third of them include at least one Mexican wine on the menu.
But the time is ripe for that situation to change. Mexican wines are much better, their distribution in the United States is slowly expanding, and customers of Mexican restaurants are beginning to realize that their drink choices shouldn’t be limited to beverages brewed with hops or agave.
“Part of our job is educating the consumer that Mexican wines can be as good as wines from anywhere else in the world,” says Mike Glazer, executive vice president of vintner relations for Southern Glazers, a liquor distributor. “As that acceptance grows, more Mexican brands will flourish.”
Better Wines
Driving the growth in Mexican wines in U.S. restaurants is increased quality. Even though grapes were first planted in Mexico by the Spaniards more than 400 years ago – in fact, Casa Madero winery in north central Mexico was founded in 1597 – modern Mexican winemaking really took off in the past few decades, driven in part by winemakers from other parts of the world who recognized that the environment in some parts of Mexico was ideal for wine grapes.
“The terroir of Baja California is similar to the climate of the Mediterranean,” says Thomas Egli, chief winemaker at VYVA, a coalition of Mexican wineries and wine-related businesses. “There are four seasons – though no snow in the winter -- and hot days. The most important: cool nights!”
Egli, a Swiss winemaker who arrived in Mexico in 2007, adds that Baja’s proximity to the sea helps its wineries.
“The climate allows even grape varieties with long vegetative cycles to reach an optimum maturity,” he says. “The soils are quite granitic and deep.”
Mexican winemakers are not afraid to try interesting blends. For example, Glazer says the best-selling wine from Casa Madero, which Southern Glazers distributes, is a red blend called 3V. It’s a mixture of cabernet sauvignon, merlot, and tempranillo grapes. The 2013 3V is rated “among the top 1 percent of wines in the world,” according to the wine rating site Vivino.
Some white blends also please the critics. Wine Spectator – which rates very few Mexican wines because of their general lack of availability in the United States – rated the 2011 Chenin-Colombard from Monte Xanic an 85.
Growing Acceptance
Overcoming the perception of poor quality is only the first challenge Mexican wines face. The second is tearing restaurant customers away from their beer and margaritas.
Christina Vega has been working on that. Vega, president of Casa Vega Mexican Restaurant in Sherman Oaks, California, has been serving Mexican wine in her restaurant for the past two years.
“We have a lot of family in Mexico, and my cousin is Javier Plascencia (owner of Misión 19 in Tijuana, Jazamango in Baja, and four other restaurants),” Vega says. “He told me about the beautiful wines down there.”
Casa Vega offers $16 flights of Mexican wine to introduce them to customers. The restaurant carries a Mexican sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, barbarossa tempranillo blend, a cabernet blend, and a rose grenache.
“The Mexican wines are not huge sellers, and we’re trying to educate our customers about them,” she says. “We’re trying to show them the high quality of the wines and tell them about the families that live on the wineries and put familial care into the wines.”
That backstory about the wineries and the families behind them is something Mota emphasizes, too.
“I have a lot of respect for the small wineries,” he says. “Before, in my mind, I was thinking if you have a vineyard, you are really rich. But when I went to Baja and started talking to these owners, I realized they are not all rich or belong to big corporations. Many of them are small producers, really nice people. And I say, yeah, I want to help these small producers. The guys who put the passion in the business. And they have a good product.”
Mexican wines have received more respect among fine-dining Mexican restaurants, which are obviously more likely to have a solid wine list to begin with. Top restaurants such as Topolobampo in Chicago; Cosme in New York; and Pez Cantina in Los Angeles carry Mexican wines on their lists.
But there are also plenty of examples of more casual places that carry Mexican wine. Puesto, which is a five-location Mexican restaurant in California, has succeeded with Mexican wines (click here to read the Who’s Who interview with Puesto co-founder Eric Adler).
“For Puesto, we even provide wine by the keg,” says Youssef Benjelloun, owner of Volubilis Imports, Inc. in Los Angeles. “We bring in a 1,000-liter tank of red wine from Mexico and ship it to a company in Napa called Free Flow Wines, and they put it in stainless steel kegs for us. Then we ship it to restaurants – Puesto mostly – that are equipped to sell wine by the keg.”
Benjelloun, who was introduced to Mexican wines just a few years ago when a friend came back from a trip to Baja, says that when restaurant owners try Mexican wines, they typically add them to the menu.
“When we do a tasting for them, more than 90 percent of the time they like the wine,” he says. “And now we have more restaurants finding us because people opening Mexican restaurants go down to Baja and taste the wines and ask who the importer is.”
Pairing Wine and Mexican Food
A natural question for a Mexican restaurant owner contemplating wine is simply whether wine goes with Mexican food. For Mota, that question has been answered.
“As I’m cooking a new dish, I always think, ‘What kind of wine will it be?’” Mota says. “Mexican wines can have a lot of layers, and I like to present those layers. We’ve started doing tastings, with nachos, the mole, the fish. It’s a passion.”
In a June 22, 2018 article in Forbes magazine, writer Lauren Mowery described an event at La Contenta Oeste in which Mota paired seven Mexican wines with various classic dishes. The pairings ranged from chardonnay/vermentino blend and nachos to a Grenache/syrah/mourvedre blend and chile relleno.
“The dinner illustrated the versatility of Mexican food with wine generally, and the range of styles being made in Mexico, specifically,” Mowery concluded in her article.
An interesting characteristic of wine as it relates to Mexican food is how it affects spiciness. Sweet wine in particular, such as Riesling, prompts the creation of saliva, which washes out capsaicin, cooling the mouth.
“The hotter or spicier the food, the more sugar and less alcohol is needed,” says winemaker Tom Drieseberg, owner of Weinguter Wegeler in Germany. Drieseberg says that with the right wine, customers who otherwise shy away from heat can enjoy even the spiciest dishes.
Another pairing recommendation for Mexican food is high acidity, herbaceous wines for dishes with a lot of green herbs. For example, consider a sauvignon blanc paired with a dish containing a strong cilantro presence.
Cheese dishes, such as queso fundido or quesadillas, pair well with earthy wines like tempranillo or sangiovese; barbacoa or carne asada can be paired with cabernet sauvignon, Malbec, or tempranillo; and rice dishes such as arroz con pollo or arroz con camarones go well with a white fruity wine like sauvignon blanc or a white blend.
The Growth Ahead
Vega says the margin her restaurant earns on a typical glass of Mexican wine is about the same as any wine, but for now, she mostly sells it by the glass rather than by the bottle, which cuts into profit.
“But I’m sticking with it because I believe in it,” she says. “I think we’re just getting the excitement going. I think five years from now a lot of people will be seeking Mexican wine.”
Ed Avis is the publisher of el Restaurante.
Sidebar: Where Can You Find Them?
Naturally, you can’t sell Mexican wine in your restaurant if you can’t get it. Distribution of wines from Mexico has slowly climbed, though it’s still not available throughout the United States. Larger wineries such as L.A. Cetto, Casa Madero and Monte Xanic are the most easily found, and some importers are bringing in quality wines from smaller wineries. In most cases, quantities are limited. If you are interested in adding Mexican wine to your menu, ask your current liquor distributor. Or consider one of these suppliers:
California
La Competencia Imports, Napa, www.lacompetenciaimports.com
Truly Fine Wine, San Diego, www.trulyfinewine.com
Volubilis Imports, La Jolla, www.volubilis2000.com
Illinois
Bodin Street Wines & Spirits, Chicago, www.bodinstreet.com
New York
International Spirits and Wines, Mount Kisco, www.internationalspiritsandwines.com
VOS Selections, New York City, vosselections.com
Texas
Serendipity Wines, Austin, www.serendipitywines.com
Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits, www.southernglazers.com
Sidebar: Baja Fever
There are three distinct wine regions in Mexico. The La Laguna region, in north central Mexico, includes Valle de Parras, home to Casa Madero, the oldest winery in North America. The Central Mexico region, which includes the areas of Aguascalientes and Guanajuato, grows grapes for Cavas Freixenet, a sparkling wine.
However, much of the current wine fever in Mexico is centered around Baja California. Cooling Pacific breezes and granitic soils are key to the grapes growing there. The area is bursting with wineries – there are at least 150 wineries in the area today, compared to five two decades ago – and wine tourism from nearby California brings 750,000 visitors a year.
“The Baja Food and Wine Fest in October provides a really big bump for the area,” says Christina Vega, president of Casa Vega Mexican Restaurant in Sherman Oaks, California. “As that festival grows, Mexican wines will be huge.”