During harvest season in the Napa and Sonoma valleys, the fields are filled with Latinos of all ages, working under the hot sun as they move through row after row of grapes on the vine that will eventually produce some of the greatest wines in the region.
But increasingly, Latinos are not just in the fields. For the members who make up the Napa Sonoma Mexican-American Vintners Association (NSMAVA), the fruits of their labor are doubly sweet. For most of these Latino winemakers, their family roots are planted as thick as the vines that grow in their fields.
Reynaldo Robledo was just 16 years old when he made the trek from Michoacan, Mexico to the Northern California wine region in 1968. He followed the lead of his uncles, who decades earlier had come to harvest the untended fields due to an American worker shortage. READ MORE
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