Vinisterra Vitivinicola

The house

Editorial review · reviewed on October 11, 2026

Vinisterra was born at a domino table. Guillermo Rodríguez Macouzet, an Ensenada businessman, used to buy wine from local wineries to bottle and share with his friends during their games, until he met Christoph Gärtner, a Swiss winemaker who was then overseeing the wines at Santo Tomás. That friendship led, in 2002, to a winery of their own, with an office in Ensenada and the cellar in San Antonio de las Minas.

Gärtner still leads the winemaking. The house calls itself a micro-producer, with about fifteen people and around 50,000 bottles a year, and it draws grapes from two valleys: San Antonio de las Minas, at the entrance to Guadalupe Valley (Valle de Guadalupe), and the Valle de Santo Tomás, south of Ensenada. Together they add up to about 27 acres (11 hectares), and the first parcel it planted, in 2002, now makes its Pedregal red.

The winery is built of brick made from the earth of the village itself, and the house says it practices minimal-intervention winemaking so that each parcel shows in the glass. Its reds for cellaring blend two varieties at a time from the south of France and Spain, a constant of the house.

Trying Vinisterra means comparing, under one name, the grapes of San Antonio de las Minas and those of Santo Tomás, and seeing how a Swiss winemaker brings them together. Whether it receives visitors, and on what schedule, has not been confirmed yet.