By Joe Bonadio

In July of 2022, Cantina Los Mayas first opened its doors on Balboa Street in San Francisco’s Richmond District. Admittedly, the debut of a Mexican restaurant in this city is rarely a notable event, but this was anything but an ordinary place. The brainchild of Yucatecan chef Juve Carrillo, Cantina Los Mayas would be something entirely new: an elevated menu of modern Yucatán cuisine, served alongside an exclusively Mexican wine list, the nation’s first of its kind.

Buoyed by the ambitious cooking of Marco Mendoza Correon, the new restaurant made a proper splash, landing square on the front page of San Francisco Chronicle’s food section just three days before opening their doors. It was an auspicious start, to say the least. The Cantina quickly built a following among discerning locals, and before long the restaurant was regularly landing on ‘Best of SF’ lists. Just over three years later, the restaurant has established itself as the Bay Area’s most well-rated upscale Mexican restaurant, no mean feat in a market estimated to have well over 4,000.

Having worked with Carrillo since he opened his very first taqueria in 2016 (the humble, now long-departed Panuchos), I was enlisted to help with the Cantina wine list nearly six years ago. Out of necessity, it became my job to track down the producers, find their distributors, arrange the tastings–and keep lots and lots of notes. Working shoulder to shoulder with Juve and his partners Vince Lam and Morgan Anderson over the course of two and a half years, we tasted and compared literally hundreds of wines. And slowly, the mighty Cantina Los Mayas wine list took shape.

While we were typically dealing with distributor’s reps who offered a portfolio of producers, with the winemakers remaining behind the scenes, there was one exception. The owner of Cē Ācatl Wines in Mexico’s Valle de Guadalupe, Cesar Reyes was the first producer of Mexican wines to cross the Cantina’s threshold. And Reyes not only showed up in person, we loved his wines, and they’ve been on our list since day one.

As I would soon discover, the winemaker also comes with a pretty good story. You see, Reyes (who originally hails from El Salvador) not only makes wine all over Mexico, he’s the only producer I know who also makes wine in Napa–and very good wine, in fact. His Prohibido label makes excellent Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir, wines that have earned him gold and double gold medals at California wine competitions for nearly a decade. Favoring single-varietal wines over blends, Reyes is exacting when it comes to the winemaking process, often aging his wines for years before release to achieve the best results; Cē Ācatl currently offers a 2017 Grenache, very unusual for that grape.

And that’s just for starters. The guy is also an expert chemist and wine consultant: he’s the one vintners call when they’ve got a problem with their wine, one they cannot solve. It’s a rare talent–a very particular set of skills, you might say–that has rescued many an imperiled cuvée. As you might imagine, this has endeared Reyes to the winemaking community, and many of Napa’s best producers have him on speed dial. “They call me the Wine Doctor,” Reyes once said to me.

The wine business has slowed down in Napa over the past few years, a shift that has given Reyes the chance to expand his Mexican portfolio. He’s now making wines from areas outside Valle de Guadalupe, and much like Mexican wines in general, Reyes’ product has continued to improve year over year.

Case in point: the only varietal we’ve never been able to source out of Mexico for Cantina Los Mayas is Pinot Noir. It’s true: after almost six years of tasting, we never found a single Mexican pinot we liked enough to buy. Happily, the Wine Doctor has been hard at work, and in September we finally had the chance to taste Reyes’ 2018 Cē Ācatl Pinot Noir, vinified in the state of Coahuila.

Bingo!  The wine was soft and subtly perfumed, with just enough backbone to stand up to Juve and Marco’s bold cuisine. At long last, Cantina Los Mayas had a proper Mexican Pinot Noir.

I enjoyed Reyes’ new wines so much that I recently started tasting them around North Beach. (Having been in the neighborhood for a while, it’s easy to get an audience, especially when you’ve got an armful of wine bottles.) My friend Lacie Thayer, General Manager at both Tupelo and Belle Cora, was the first to taste the pinot noir–and it quickly got her attention.

One afternoon in early October, we got together at Tupelo: Cesar came into the city, and by chance, Teague Kernan, co-owner of both Tupelo and Belle Cora, was able to join us. We tasted through the wines, and let’s just say it went about as well as it could have. Kernan, who also owns a bar in Sayulita, Mexico, was happy to support an independent Mexican winemaker–and more importantly, they loved the wines. They immediately put the Pinot Noir on their list, along with the Cabernet, the Grenache and two of Reyes’ Prohibido dessert wines–now available at Tupelo. And to my delight, they also added the Cē Ācatl cabernet to the list at Belle Cora, which has long been my second home in North Beach.

When I spoke with Reyes, he was thrilled to see this new audience opening up for his wines. “It’s great to see people enjoying these wines for the first time, especially in a place like North Beach,” the winemaker told me. “Mexican wines in an old Italian neighborhood….I like it.”

Rest assured, I’ll be back here soon to report on Reyes’ progress with Cē Ācatl and Prohibido. In the meanwhile, you can now find his delicious wines at the venues below. See you in the neighborhood!

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Cantina Los Mayas
431 Balboa Street
Richmond District

Tupelo
1337 Grant Avenue
North Beach

Belle Cora
565 Green Street
North Beach

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