Querétaro Wine Tour

While I'm typically a DIY traveller, there is something to be said for guided tours. Having your itinerary, transportation, and meals taken care of is a great way to relax and enjoy the journey. However, you might also miss out on doing things at your own pace or on seeing exactly what you want to see. A good compromise is a private tour. Private tours tend to be expensive, but sometimes they're worth it, especially in a country where the exchange rate favors you. (Like Mexico!)

I wanted two things out of a day trip to the neighboring state of Querétaro - to visit the striking little town of Peña de Bernal, and to do a tasting at one of the local wineries. Aarón's tour included both of these things, along with a few additional stops. He picked us up directly at our Airbnb in San Miguel de Allende and drove us out to Peña de Bernal, chatting about the countryside and answering Mom's many questions along the way.

After admiring the mountain that the town is named for and the alebrijes in the middle of the street, our first stop was at a local crafts store, where they still use traditional weaving methods. Mom and I were still settling in to the pace of the tour - while Aarón was great at letting us take our time, we were also very aware that this was the first stop of the day, so we ended up maybe not looking as carefully as we usually do and left without buying anything.

We also stopped briefly at a small church dedicated to San Sebastian (my favorite), checking out how some indigenous beliefs and symbols had been wrapped into the Christian iconography.

Our next stop was Finca Sala Vive, the home of one of Mexico's sparkling wine distributors. Aarón handed us off to our guide, who was sweet, perky, and knowledgable. It's a large and rather corporate winery, but the tour was interesting and the bubbly was pretty good.

We stopped in the town of Tequisquiapan for lunch. Aarón took us to a place owned by an Austrian expat. It was an interesting choice, but the food was good. We walked toward the main square, stopping to buy some cute and colorful woven baskets along the way. One currently sits on my kitchen windowsill, with three tiny potted succulents lined up inside.

Our last stop of the day was the Bocanegra cheese factory. Here, we were taken out to the back patio, overlooking flat, dry farmland - really pretty and peaceful. We sampled different types of cheese, paired with fruit, olives, bread, etc. We were also given a choice between visiting the goats or seeing the cheese cellar - we chose the latter.

It was a full day and the ride back to San Miguel was relatively quiet - Aarón switched on the radio and Mom and I sat back and enjoyed the scenery. I'm so glad we chose to do the tour - it ended up being about $150 USD per person, which we thought was a good value given all the things it included. We definitely could not have done everything we did on our own and it was interesting to get the local perspective on a variety of issues (being us, we had fun talking politics). I definitely recommend Aarón's tour if you'd like to see some of the highlights of Querétaro state while visiting San Miguel de Allende!