At the Robledo
Family Winery, Genaro Robledo,
with his daughter, Jianna, is the vineyard manager.
Latino
Winemakers Rise in California, Through the Ranks
By FBWorld Team
SONOMA,
Calif. - It is harvest season in wine country, the time
of year when the scent of crushed grapes infuses the air
and flatbed trucks heavy with fruit cargo come lurching
down narrow back roads.
Lazaro Robledo runs the tasting room.
For
the winemaker Everardo Robledo - who grew up working in
the fields alongside his father, Reynaldo, on weekends
and after school - the harvest has a particular emotional
resonance: a measure of how far the family has come since
his Mexican immigrant grandfather drifted from one migrant
labor camp to another and his father toiled in the vineyards
for $1.10 an hour.
Mr.
Robledo, 30, and his family are part of a tiny but growing
fraternity of Mexican-American winemakers, many of them
farmworkers' children who now pursue wine business degrees
or study viticulture and oenology at the University of
California, Davis. "It's what we have been doing
all our lives," the younger Mr. Robledo said of picking,
pruning, trellising, planting and "suckering,"
or removing unwanted shoots from vines. "The land
is in our DNA."
For
tourists here and in other wine-producing regions, the
harvest is an opportunity to swirl, sniff and sip wine,
stomp grapes and revel in dinners by master chefs. In
Sonoma, visitors can experience an annual "grape
camp" whose Web site advertises "three blissful
days" picking grapes.
The Napa Sonoma Mexican-American Vintners Association's
celebrated
the harvest last month. Its members have collectively
launched some 14 wineries. Jim Wilson/The New York Times
But
for members of the three-year-old Napa Sonoma Mexican-American
Vintners Association - who have collectively launched
some 14 wineries - the cusp of the harvest is a time to
celebrate and take stock. At their recent Vendimia, or
harvest party, winemakers like Mario Bazán reveled
on the Robledos' patio, the moon rising as if on cue to
bathe rows of chardonnay grapes in chiaroscuro-like light.
Amid
celebratory yells by folk dancers and mariachi musicians,
Mr. Bazán recalled arriving in the "Valle
de Napa" in 1973 from Oaxaca as an 18-year-old. He
cut brush and cleared fields, spending three years in
a labor camp bunkhouse. At harvest, when picking frequently
begins in the dead of night under glaring lights, Mr.
Bazán's goal was to accrue enough hours to save
$2,000. Like many here, he worked his way up - from picker,
to tractor driver, to foreman, to vineyard manager who
also produces his own boutique cabernet sauvignon.
"All
of us have come from the ground up," said Rafael
Rios, 46, the group's president, whose father came to
the Napa Valley under the bracero program, a series of
guest-worker agreements between the United States and
Mexico. "We know how it feels to be in the fields
in 90 degrees."
Mr.
Rios's path reflects the rise of a new generation of aspiring
Mexican-American Mondavis.
One of seven siblings, he returned home from college at
U.C. Davis every fall to help his father "work the
crush," as he put it, cleaning conveyor belts and
grape destemming machines. Mr. Rios's label, Justicia
Wines, is subsidized with income from his day job as a
lawyer specializing in the wine industry.
His
fellow Mexican-American vintners work as cellar masters
and vineyard managers, and in related businesses like
manufacturing boxes for transporting bottles. Many admit
that their wine has yet to make a profit and that they
represent only a fraction of California's winemaking industry.
Yet many of them have received kudos from fellow professionals,
and they could be well positioned for a growing Latino
market.
"We're
in an industry commonly known as a millionaire's playground,"
Ignacio Delgadillo Jr. noted somewhat wryly. "But
our wines were created through a lot of struggle and passion,
without the fancy chateaus."
The Napa Sonoma Mexican-American Vintners Association's
celebrated the harvest last month. Its members have collectively
launched some 14 wineries. Jim Wilson/The New York Times
In
Napa and Sonoma, the changing nature of vineyard practices,
including denser spacing of vineyard rows, increased the
demand for skilled year-round agricultural labor. A recent
survey of farmworkers commissioned by Napa County found
that although 95 percent were originally from Mexico,
54 percent considered Napa County their permanent home.
The report suggested the need for more affordable housing
to accommodate low-income families.
"Winemakers
are the rock stars of Napa," said Sandra Nichols,
a geographer who has written several major studies on
Mexican migration. "Why shouldn't people who are
now settled move into the peak of the profession?"
Carlos
Hagedorn, a Mexican-American studies instructor at Napa
Valley College, said the vintners are becoming role models.
"It's about raising expectations, whether it's going
into the wine business or owning a garage instead of being
a mechanic," he said.
Nevertheless,
the idea of the renegade entrepreneur going it alone is
not part of the equation. Pedro Ceja, 66, an engineer
who co-founded Ceja Vineyards, went to college, as did
six of his nine siblings, even though his parents lacked
formal education in Michoacan. In the early 1980s, the
family bought a 15-acre plot in Carneros.
Today,
Pedro's brother Armando is a winemaker, and his brother
Jesus owns the Carneros Brewing Company.
Hugo
Maldonado, also a farmworkers' son, grew up with his father's
perpetual refrain: "If you get up in the morning
and go to work, you'll be fine." And even now, every
day at 6 a.m. sharp, there is a familiar 72-year-old voice
on the other end of the phone, asking Mr. Maldonado if
he is working yet.
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By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
Courtesy of New York Times National
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