This is a winery that I’ve visited a couple of times. It is down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere in the Guadalupe Valley (inland from Ensenada). The Guadalupe Valley is a place that is full of dust, great food, shitty roads and shitty wine. Amid all that are a couple of overpriced shitty wines and one real gem. Antonio Badan is a Swiss ex-pat oceanographer who worked for the Mexican government in Ensenada. He lived on and ran a supremely cool off-the-grid winery and farm. They generated their own power, pumped their own small amount of water, and generated zero waste, a contained system. I met Antonio a few times on visits to his small (500 case) winery and he was always an amazingly cool person. Very kind, gentle and generous but not in a country-folk way, rather in a Renaissance man who is doing his own thing in BFE kind of way.
In reading up more on Mogor-Badan, I have found that Antonio (the wine-maker / founder / owner / everything) passed away in 2008 and his sister (who lived on the off-the-grid property with him and did a lot of the farming) has taken over the winery. Very sad, Antonio was perhaps in his 60s and appeared very healthy. He was always extremely friendly, generous and kind when we visited. He always made us smile and his wines are great to boot, which is highly unexpected after tasting the rest of the stuff from the region.
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2004 Mogor Badan - Mexico, Baja California (6/17/2009)
40% Cab Franc / 40% Merlot / 20 Cab Sauv. Red fruit (cherries), sweet earth, rainwater, cocoa powder, flowers, cedar, a pleasant dried herb tinge, an ever so slight saline note. Tannin remains on the palate (not wood tannin) that is a touch coarse but far from problematic. Good length with plums and dusty earth again. This has several years left at least. Good stuff, great wine for the price and still by far the best wine coming out of the Guadalupe Valley of what I’ve tasted. I think this easily holds it’s own with the best right bank wines in it’s price range ($25)… actually I can’t think of a right bank wine I like as well at the price point! The saline note and the earthy character are readily identifiable to me and recall the Guadalupe Valley readily. A really minimally made wine with a lot of character and a lot to say, perhaps why I prefer it so strongly to right bank wines in it’s price range.
Posted from CellarTracker
This winery also makes a Chasselas (in the Guadalupe Valley(!), a throwback to their Swiss heritage) but I have never tried it, they are perpetually sold out as the production is tiny.
