By Melissa Lyon—

Spend an afternoon tasting wine in Mexico’s Valle de Guadalupe and sooner rather than later, someone will pour you a Nebbiolo. That may not sound particularly unusual. After all, Nebbiolo is one of Italy’s most celebrated red grapes, responsible for the legendary Barolo and Barbaresco wines of Piedmont. But there is something decidedly strange about encountering it in Baja California. Among other things, Valle de Guadalupe is thousands of kilometers from northern Italy, and its climate is considerably sunnier and drier. And yet Nebbiolo has become one of the valley’s predominant varieties.
There is just one problem. Some of the grapes being called Nebbiolo in Baja California may not actually be Nebbiolo.
The story begins more than eighty years ago, when Italian-born winemaker Esteban Ferro brought vine cuttings from northern Italy to Bodegas Santo Tomás in Baja California in the 1940s. But the journey from Italy to Mexico was not always an orderly one. Legend has it that in transit, vine labels were damaged or lost while moving through the port of Veracruz. Upon arrival in Baja, rather than discarding the unidentified vines, growers planted them. Robust harvests followed, with vines identified as Nebbiolo and others simply known as “Italian varieties” thriving in their new home.

Fast forward to 1965, when Italian viticulturist Camillo Magoni, who would go on to become one of the most influential figures in Mexican wine, arrived in Baja to work with L.A. Cetto. Having grown up surrounded by viticulture in northern Italy, and having studied winemaking in Piedmont, Magoni was uniquely qualified to recognize that something unusual was going on.
The grape being called Nebbiolo in Baja did not look or taste like the Nebbiolo he knew in Italy. Italian Nebbiolo wines, like the Barolo and Barbaresco wines of Piedmont, are famously pale in color but intensely aromatic, with high acidity, firm tannins and characteristic aromas of cherries, roses and violets.

In contrast, Baja’s “Nebbiolo” tends to be much darker and more deeply colored, with riper fruit, greater tannic weight and a more powerful profile.
Magoni, now 83 years old, recently remarked on his surprise encountering the vines upon arrival, “Of course,” he said, “I had my ideas. But I shut my mouth and just observed and didn’t talk.” Acknowledging the difference, Magoni specifically calls the grape Nebbiolo de Baja. So, what do others think of the Mexican “Nebbiolo”? “It’s not Italian. There’s more color, more intensity,” said Paolo Paoloni, an Italian winemaker working with Baja’s Villa Montefiori. Paoloni calls his version Nebbiolo de Guadalupe, emphasizing the wine’s relationship with its regional identity.
So what exactly is growing in those vineyards? Modern DNA analysis has provided a clue. José Vouillamoz, one of the world’s leading grape geneticists and co-author of Wine Grapes, has reported that at least one sample of the mysterious Baja vine tested as potentially being Lambrusca di Alessandria. If confirmed more broadly, this would mean that at least some of the vines long identified in Mexico as Nebbiolo may actually belong to another Italian variety.
However, the evidence is far from conclusive. The sample represented only a limited number of vines, and additional genetic testing would be required before the identity of the broader population of Baja vines could be established. Unquestionably, there are genuine Nebbiolo vines growing in Baja as well, sharing the beautiful valley with the older, mysterious population of vines historically labeled Nebbiolo.
This certainly isn’t the only case of mistaken grape identity to happen in the New World. Consider the more recent case of Mourvèdre in Paso Robles, California. In 2018, the wine world learned that beginning in 2012, more than 200,000 vines sold by a California nursery as Monastrell, the Spanish name for Mourvèdre, were planted in vineyards throughout the region.

As they harvested and bottled their wines, winemakers increasingly noticed that something was not quite right. The vines grew differently from their established Mourvèdre, and the resulting grapes produced wines with unusually deep color and higher acidity.
Genetic testing eventually revealed the answer: the vines weren’t Mourvèdre at all. They were Graciano, a relatively obscure Spanish variety associated particularly with Rioja. In other words, hundreds of thousands of vines, and years of wine production, had been given the wrong label. Even so, the Paso Robles Graciano was praised for its color, fruit and acidity, and its curious origin story has only enhanced its consumer appeal.
Similarly, the Nebbiolo of Baja has won over wine enthusiasts the world over. Of course, while the Paso Robles vines were ultimately confirmed as Graciano through genetic testing, the identity of the Mexican Nebbiolo remains unclear.

So, does the name really matter? For some winemakers and oenophiles, absolutely. For others, perhaps not so much. Kristin Magnussen of Vinos Lechuza takes a refreshingly pragmatic view. “Is it really Nebbiolo? Well, it’s Mexican Nebbiolo.”