Bichi means "naked" in the Yaqui dialect of Sonora, the Tellez family's home state, and the name doubles as a manifesto: wines made without makeup, from forgotten Baja vines.
Backstory
Bichi was founded in 2014 by the Tellez family, who moved to Baja California from neighboring Sonora; the name carries their Sonoran roots with it. Noel Tellez left a career in law to run the project full time and is now the driving force behind every decision in the vineyard and cellar. From the start the family set out to revive old, nearly abandoned plantings and to make wines from the heirloom grapes of the region rather than the international varieties that dominate much of Mexican wine. In doing so they helped spark wider interest in low-intervention winemaking across Baja.
The Region
The winery sits on the stony mountains near Tecate, in Baja California, Mexico, with additional fruit drawn from the wider Valle de Guadalupe and surrounding valleys. This is a dry, sun-baked, high-desert landscape where dry farming is the norm and where many of the surviving vineyards predate modern viticulture, having been planted generations ago by families who never grafted onto American rootstock. That history left Baja with a trove of old, own-rooted vines that Bichi has made it a mission to protect.
Vineyards & Farming
Bichi works roughly 10 hectares of owned, biodynamically farmed vineyards, much of it own-rooted and pre-phylloxera. The team focuses on reviving century-old, dry-farmed sites planted to indigenous and lesser-known grapes, including Mision (Listan Prieto), Rosa del Peru (Moscatel Negro), Tempranillo, Dolcetto, and others. The Chilean natural-wine pioneer Louis-Antoine Luyt began collaborating with the family in 2014 and encouraged Noel to seek out the heirloom Mision plantings that became central to the project.
Winemaking
In the cellar, Bichi adheres to centuries-old technique: hand de-stemming, foot treading, and spontaneous fermentation with wild yeasts in concrete, amphorae, and traditional tinajas. Wines age in neutral vessels such as old barrels and stainless steel. There is no fining and no filtration, and sulfites are used only at trace levels, around 10 ppm, when judged necessary for travel.
The Wines
The range showcases Baja's varietal diversity, drawing on grapes from Palomino and Sauvignon Blanc to Garnacha, Tempranillo, Nebbiolo, Cariñena, and Dolcetto. Listan is a 100% Mision red from Tecate; No Sapiens is a vibrant, structured red built on Dolcetto; and the Pet Mex line delivers pet-nat sparklers, including a rose, from old, dry-farmed, own-rooted parcels such as the historic San Antonio de las Minas vineyard. Across the board the wines are crunchy, savory, and unmistakably of their place, and they helped put Mexican natural wine on the map in bars from the United States to Bar Brutal in Barcelona and the natural-wine scene in Copenhagen.
