🍷Tres Raíces winery: Discover award-winning Mexican wines
These Mexican wines hold their own against the best from California, Europe, and Argentina. Here's what you need to know about tastings and tours at Tres Raíces.
In the US, we don’t have many opportunities to try Mexican wines. They aren’t offered in many restaurants or available widely in stores.
But we’ve been impressed by what we’ve tried in Mexico City restaurants. So when we visited San Miguel de Allende with two wine-loving friends, we ventured out to Tres Raíces winery for a tasting.
It proved to be relatively daunting. We’ve visited many wineries in California and upstate New York, especially, some multiple times. But Tres Raíces is geographically inaccessible in ways we found surprising.
It’s a 30- to 40-minute drive from San Miguel de Allende, and some of that is over cobblestoned or dirt roads. You’ll want to plan ahead better than we did if you’re going to visit here.
It started off well enough.
You can make a reservation for various tastings, tours, food pairings, restaurant meals, or winemaking workshops. We booked the five-wine premium tasting for $800 MXN ($40 USD) per person. We checked their website in the morning and they had availability for our group of four that afternoon.
Tres Raíces has a hotel and two restaurants in addition to a large tasting area and wine shop, but after you get off the main road, you drive for several minutes on a dusty dirt road before you reach their location.
We weren’t sure where to go when we got out of our Uber at the edge of a vast, empty parking lot. The entrance is to the far left of the first major building on the property.
We tried the enormous restaurant doors at its front but they were locked, and there were no signs or other indications of the correct way to proceed. So we walked across the parking lot in the bright sun to the distant hotel check-in building.
There, we finally ran into a human being, and she told us the entrance was on the other side of that first building. So we trudged back, walked around to the far side, and walked into a surprisingly familiar winery experience.
Until this moment, we felt like we were mostly alone on the grounds of this gigantic facility. But there were people here, and suddenly all was well.
We had a few minutes to wait before our tasting started, so we cooled down and took a few photos of the decor.
The wine tasting was excellent, as was our host. He walked us through the history of each wine, guiding us as we examined their colors, scents, and flavors.
Another group was tasting different wines at the same time, and his knowledge and memory were truly impressive, as he switched between us, never losing a beat.
Our tasting included:
Chardonnay
Merlot
Cabernet Sauvignon
Tempranillo
Malbec
Every one of them was well-crafted and balanced. They were all quite different, but special in their own way. The four of us agreed that they could stand up to top wines from anywhere in the world, and some of them have the awards to prove it.
After the tasting, we went up to their Terruño Restaurant, in the same building, to share a bottle of wine and have some snacks while gazing out over the stark terrain outside.
When we were ready to head back to San Miguel de Allende, we realized we had made a big mistake. We hadn’t arranged for transportation, and there were no Uber or Didi drivers available for the return trip. Both apps were useless in this remote location.
That was momentarily scary. But we asked the staff if it was possible to arrange a ride. They called a taxi to come for us, but because this winery is so distant, we had to wait another 45 minutes for it to arrive.
We sat at their bar and drank a bit more wine while we waited. And then, once we got back to our hotel, we tipped the driver handsomely for the effort.
In hindsight, we should have thought of in advance. We could have pre-arranged a return trip with our Uber driver or a taxi, or contacted the winery earlier to book transportation. We’re not fans of driving in Mexico, but a car rental would have been a better option, too.
Still, the experience was unforgettable, and we would do it again. We would just prepare for the return trip ahead of time.
Great Visit to this wonderful winery
Pre-arranging your transport is definitely good advice - but having a backup plan is also worthwhile! A few years ago my partner and I had photographer's pass to Kolmanskop, a picturesque diamond-mining ghost town in Namibia (strongly recommend!!). After being dropped off around dawn by a driver recommended at the nearby town's visitor centre and prearranging a time to be collected just after sunset, we eventually discovered that the lateness of the morning journey (because the driver slept in) should've been a sign. With no driver in sight, his phone ringing out and nobody else apparently around, we were not looking forward to a 10km walk along a Namibian highway with only a stiff freezing wind to keep us company, particularly when there's still active diamond-mining (with its associated jumpy security) in the area, the name of which translates from German as "forbidden zone".
A stroke of extreme good fortune hit us, however, and we discovered one woman had been staying late at the hours-ago-closed little cafe, and when her partner arrived to collect her, they were perfectly happy to take us home. Not only did they refuse any kind of compensation, they surreptitiously paid for their friend at a restaurant in the town where we were staying to provide dinner, as "they reckoned you've had a bloody long day" (we were relieved to be able to return the favour food-wise the following day at another place).
Ever since then, plans aren't plans until there are backup plans!