Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the bottle is brandy. The steel tank room
that holds surprisingly good Chardonnay is
actually an outside courtyard dappled in
sunlight with a long vine-covered pergola
providing shade. Elsewhere, old shuttered
windows lead to silent cellars with dark oak
casks. At your tastings, looks for the Caber-
net Sauvignons and Shirazes that have won
the winery so many medals lately.
The Maderos are one of Mexico's oldest
families, with a heritage that goes back
centuries. They are members of the landed
gentry, with a range of business interests
that include gold and silver mines and TV
channels; their ancestors include assassi-
nated presidents. But the Maderos cer-
tainly know how to throw a fiesta: Every
year they hold a family reunion on the
sprawling estate and invite every relative,
all 5,000 of them. Private jets ferry guests
onto their personal airstrip, and the fes-
tivities include bullfighting and good old-
fashioned horsemanship, not to mention
lots of food and wine.
Casa Madero's owners have decided to
extend further this typical Mexican hospi-
tality by opening a wine lodge for guests
(groups only). The 25-room
Posada Casa
Grande
is a long, white adobe building
draped in purple bougainvillea, complete
with a splendid wide lawn, serene shaded
courtyards, and an immaculate blue
swimming pool. The decor is deeply Old
World—16th-century art and ancient tap-
estries on the walls, hand-carved wooden
furniture in every room. The whole beauti-
ful complex is set in its own lush valley of
vines surrounded by dry crumpled hills.
The resurgence in Mexican wine is hap-
pening mostly in Baja California; Madero is
much farther east, 210km (130 miles) west
of Monterey, close to a quaint colonial
town called Parras. But the name Parras
means “vines” in Spanish, and the city has
been trying to raise its wine profile, hold-
ing a spectacular wine festival every
August and hosting outside consultants,
who have jump-started a marked increase
in the region's wine quality. After all, it has
dry desert soil, constant sunshine, and
spring-irrigated vineyards—a perfect
wine-making climate.
Beautiful, gracious Casa Madero is defi-
nitely off the beaten track, but it is worth
an adventurous road trip. After all, how
many 400-year-old wineries are there?
Casa Madero,
Emilio Carranza Sur
732, Parras, Coahuila (
&
52/8/390-0936;
www.madero.com.mx).
(
Torreon Airport (124km/77 miles).
L
$$
Hampton Inn Torreon Coahu-
ila,
Perif Raul Lopez Sanchez 10995,
Torreon (
&
52/871/705-1550;
www.
hamptoninn.hilton.com). $$
Howard
Johnson Torreon Coahuila,
Hidalgo
1353 Poniente C.P., Torreon (
&
800/446-
4656;
www.hojo.com).
Southern Hemisphere
358
Vergelegen
The Cape of Good Hope
Stellenbosch, Western Cape, South Africa
Standing beside the fat trunks of 300-year-
old camphor trees, you begin to question
the concept of New World and old-world
wines. Surely this South African winery
has more claim to the badge of heritage
and tradition than, say, a modern day
garagista
working out of a steel-framed
corrugated warehouse in Bordeaux.
After all, wines were first made here in
the Western Cape in the 17th century,
when Jan Van Riebeeck first saw the poten-
tial for vine-growing in these sweeping
