I have never seen anyone in a restaurant apologize for ordering a beer because they do not know much about beer. With wine, though, people sometimes play hot potato when the wine list arrives: let someone else choose, preferably the person who “really knows”.
That has always seemed curious to me because wine is, after all, an agricultural product. It has its transformations, complexities and particularities, but it begins in the vineyard, just like an apple or a peach.
Visiting a vineyard helps bring back that sense of closeness. You can walk where the grapes grow, understand some of the decisions behind a bottle and meet the people who make it possible. That experience can change the way you enjoy wine.
I see it in the people who visit us at San Juanito. I also experienced it myself while working in vineyards in Italy—an experience without which our own vineyard would probably not exist.
When a bottle takes on an identity
Many people arrive at a vineyard without knowing all the work behind a bottle. If I exaggerate a little, it can seem as if there were a bottle tree: bottles grow, ripen and someone simply picks them.
From that distance, a bottle can feel rather impersonal. You taste it, decide whether you like it and judge it without knowing much about how it got there.
During a visit, you begin to discover the work, the decisions and the story of the people who make it. The wine then takes on an identity. It is a little like getting to know someone.
Your taste is still your own. What changes is the context in which you taste. You can recognize an intention, understand a decision or remember the person who explained the process to you.
I would even say—half joking, half seriously—that the wine starts to taste a little better afterward. The experience of drinking it now includes everything you came to know.
What an early-morning harvest can teach you
One of the things I most enjoy explaining during a visit to San Juanito is why we harvest before dawn and what it means to have the vineyard just steps away from the winery.
It may sound like a small detail. For us, it has very concrete consequences.
Fruit temperature matters
When we harvest before dawn, the grapes arrive at the winery cool. That helps us reduce the risk of unwanted microorganism activity while we begin working with the fruit.
There is also an energy consideration. We need less energy to bring the fruit to working temperature than we would if it arrived with the heat of midday in the middle of summer.
We are mindful of our carbon footprint, and this is one of the decisions through which we can act on it in our everyday operation.
Distance is part of the process too
Having the winery next to the vineyard lets us begin working with the fruit immediately.
In our case, fewer than thirty minutes can pass between cutting the clusters, sorting them, destemming them and having them in a tank, macerating and beginning their journey toward wine.
When you visit and see that proximity, you can better understand the connection between the vineyard and winemaking. The tour lets you connect an explanation to something tangible: the plot, the distance the grapes travel and the tank where they arrive.
You begin to discover how many decisions sit behind something as everyday as pouring a glass of wine.
What I learned working in Italian vineyards
My own story with wine is deeply tied to having worked in vineyards in Italy. That experience influenced me so much that, without it, San Juanito would probably not exist.
From those years I remember scenes that explain very well the value of learning close to the people who make the wine.
A welcome with a cork under my nose
At one of those vineyards, I had not been there for ten minutes when the owner rubbed a cork under my nose and told me, very seriously:
“Do you smell this? This is what corked wine smells like. Learn it!”
She was referring to TCA, the compound associated with that wine fault.
I still remember the scene. It was a direct lesson, tied to a smell, a person and a moment. That kind of learning has a special force: you can connect what someone explains to an experience of your own.
During a vineyard visit, you can build those sensory references too. Asking, smelling, tasting and tasting again gives you tools to better understand what you find later in a bottle.
Violin makers and the world of wine
At that same vineyard, they hosted a gathering of violin makers and violinists for a week.
Watching them, I remember thinking about the parallels with our world: producers, sommeliers and wine critics.
My impression was that the instrument makers were more approachable, with less pose. It reminded me of something I have also found among people who make wine: conversations with the producer are often much simpler than someone might imagine from the outside.
That is a valuable opportunity during a visit. When you are face to face with the person who makes the wine, you can ask directly about their decisions and hear how they explain them.
How to make the most of your next vineyard visit
Take the snobbery out of wine
You can enjoy a visit with whatever knowledge you have today. Speak in your own words and describe what you notice.
Let us go back to basics: you are getting to know a product that comes from the land and the people who transform it. Curiosity is a good starting point for that conversation.
Taste with an open mind
There is a lot of pseudo-knowledge in the wine world: claims repeated without enough context and explanations that sometimes look more like voodoo than science.
My recommendation is to put those certainties on pause during the visit.
Listen, taste and ask why something is done in a particular way. If an explanation contradicts something you had heard, take the opportunity to understand the conditions in which each idea applies.
That is how you can leave with better-informed judgment.
Ask questions
When you have the person who makes the wine in front of you, take advantage of the opportunity. A few questions that can open a good conversation are:
- Why do you harvest at that time?
- What happens to the grapes from the moment they are cut until they reach the tank?
- What winemaking decision helps explain what I am tasting?
- What was especially difficult or interesting about this harvest?
The answers can help you connect what happens in the vineyard and the winery with what you perceive in the glass. You can also explore our guide to wine tasting before your visit.
Wine also accompanies the moments we celebrate. Discover weddings at the vineyard and the experiences we create among the vines.
Get to know the winery’s story and its people
Ask how the project began, what led its producers to devote themselves to wine and what they have learned along the way.
In my case, that conversation goes through Italy, a welcome with a cork under my nose and experiences that ended up shaping the existence of San Juanito.
Every winery has its own story. Knowing it can make the next bottle you open bring back the place, a conversation or a decision that you now understand better.
That is what I would like visitors to take away from San Juanito: the confidence to ask, the curiosity to keep tasting and a more personal relationship with wine.
Ready to experience it in person?
Plan your visit to San Juanito in the Valle de Bernal, Querétaro.
