Rooted in Struggle: Meet Mexican Americans Working in the Wine Industry

At one point in the documentary "Bodega de Edgar," Paso Robles winemaker Edgar Torres bends down to pick up a foot-long chunk of limestone from the soil of a scenic vineyard.

"This is a perfect example of what's underneath the soil," he says, turning the rock over in his hands. "Just imagine — the vine has to go through it and anchor itself. By doing that, it's struggling. The concentration on everything — the flavor, the color, the natural chemistry going on here — is very special."

Like that intrepid vine, Torres has experienced plenty of struggles over the decades. Smuggled into the United States in the back of a Volkswagen bus at age 8, he worked his way through the San Luis Obispo County restaurant and wine industries to become Paso Robles' first Mexican American winemaker.

It's a title that "reminds me of all the hardship I had to face," said Torres, who launched his own brand, Bodega de Edgar, in 2007. "I didn't have a dad I could lean on financially. I didn't have the ability to go to the bank and borrow the money."

"Ultimately, it was my sweat equity that got me where I'm at," he said.

How Mexican Migrants Shaped California Wine Industry

Although Paso Robles is home to a handful of Latinx winemakers — including Stanley Barrios of Top Winery, Enrique Torres of Diablo Paso Wines and Pedro Vasquez of Law Estate Wines — vintners of Mexican heritage remain a relatively uncommon sight on the Central Coast.

"It's such a rare occurrence," said Miguel Lepe, owner and winemaker of Lepe Cellars in Carmel-By-the-Sea. "What bothers me is it is rare and there's no reason for it to be rare. There's no reason why any other Mexican can't become a winemaker."

In fact, only about 50 wineries in California are owned by Mexican Americans, according to UC Berkeley associate professor Alex Saragoza, who's writing a book on the subject. "They're a drop in the bucket" considering the thousands of wineries that call the Golden State home, he said.

That lack of representation is especially surprising given the fact that people of Mexican descent have made up the majority of the labor force for California's wine industry since the early 20th century, Saragoza said.

According to the UC Berkeley professor, that trend started with the first bracero program, which allowed Mexican workers to fill seasonal jobs on American farms. The agreement between the U.S. and Mexican governments went into effect in 1917, coinciding with the United States' entry into World War I, and lasted until 1921.

Around the same period, discriminatory laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the Immigration Act of 1917 and the Immigration Act of 1924 blocked workers from Asia and Europe from moving to the United States.

"By the mid-1920s, they (Mexican immigrants) were absolutely dominant in farm labor in general," said Saragoza, who's been teaching an ethnic studies course on the California wine industry at Cal for the past decade.

Labor shortages during World War II led to the second bracero agreement, which brought another wave of Mexican farm workers from 1942 to 1964.

'We Live and Breathe This Industry'

With so many Mexican immigrants working in the wine industry — as field workers, cellar rats, grape growers, vineyard managers and more — a few were "able to create some momentum" and achieve their dreams of establishing wineries of their own, Napa-based viticulturist and vintner Guillermo Herrera said.

He's the president of the Mexican American Vintners Association, a small trade organization that seeks to promote wines produced by Mexican American vintners and support the contributions of Mexican Americans in the wine industry.

The group counts the families behind some of the nation's most prominent Latinx-owned wineries — Ceja Vineyards, Mi Sueño Winery and Robledo Family Wines, to name a few — along its members. Most were founded by immigrants from Mexico working in Napa and Sonoma counties.

"We live and breathe this industry, so we're very vested in what we do," Herrera, the founder and president of Heritage Vineyard Management in Napa. "We're very proud and very excited that we're able to dabble in this realm."

"A lot of the excitement behind the Mexican American vintners is the way people self-identify [our success story]," Herrera added. "Our story transcends. It's the story of grit, of hard work …"

Hererra speaks from experience: Born in Los Angeles, he spent his childhood in the vineyards of Napa with his mom, a field worker from Zacatecas.

In 2012, Herrera and his wife, Angelica, launched their own winery — Herencia del Valle — as a way to "pay tribute to the people who came before us." Their "legacy project" produces about 200 cases of wine a year.

According to Saragoza, a few key factors distinguish the Mexican American winemakers who have survived — and thrived. They include the ability to build capital, develop skills and forge connections with established winemakers, the researcher said.

The winemakers have also benefited from support in the form of family members — often wives and daughters — who handle everything from payroll to permitting, Saragoza said.

"These are hardworking people who have achieved the American Dream [but] that's only part of the story," Saragoza said. "A lot of the books leave out the drama, the hard work, the struggles, especially the challenges faced by small wineries in the face of these goliaths."

What Challenges Face Mexican American Vintners?

Finances have long been at the heart of those hurdles.

"Primarily the struggle has always been a lack of capital (and) the inability to access traditional financing," Herrera said. "It's really difficult to get the financing behind one of these projects."

Saving up enough to buy a vineyard or bottling equipment, for instance, can be especially challenging for Mexican immigrants and first-generation Americans without access to generational wealth, he said.

According to Herrera, the other key challenge facing Mexican American vintners involves distributing and marketing their products in an industry where smaller producers are competing with increasingly bigger companies. (Many of those major corporations, Saragoza noted, are consolidating power by buying up the competition.)

"The distribution market is really run by the big boys" such as E&J Gallo Winery and Constellation Brands, Herrera said.

Many smaller wineries can't meet the production threshold required to get their bottles into grocery store, hotel and restaurant chains, he said, so they rely on direct-to-consumer sales instead. "It's really difficult to make that leap from 2,000 to 20,000 [cases a year]," Herrera explained.

Saragoza also spoke about the "incredible intensity of the competitiveness within the wine industry," a situation that has only worsened as per capita wine consumption declines around the world. He noted that a key wine-drinking demographic, Baby Boomers, is dropping in numbers, which means companies are vying for the attention of fewer and fewer consumers.

"It's a challenging business to say the least," Hererra said.

Challenges Encourage Central Coast Winemaker to 'Push Forward'

The challenging nature of today's wine industry hasn't deterred Mexican Americans like Lepe, whose parents are Jalisco natives.

"My parents worked in the fields (harvesting lettuce). They worked really hard to put food on the table. They couldn't give us a lot," said the Salinas native, who's considered the first Mexican American winemaker on the Monterey Peninsula. "I only went to college because I got a really big student loan that allowed me to move forward and build my career."

Lepe originally planned to major in business administration. During his last semester at Hartnell College in Salinas, however, he took a vineyard production class by pure chance.

"That one class changed my life," Lepe recalled. "When I found out you could major in wine, it completely changed my whole career."

Lepe enrolled at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, interning during harvests at Claiborne & Churchill Vintners in San Luis Obispo and Le Vigne Winery in Paso Robles. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in viticulture and enology in 2011, he went to work for Justin Vineyards & Winery in Paso Robles and Waters Edge Wineries in Rancho Cucamonga.

But Lepe found his focus at Carmel Valley winery Figge Cellars, where vintner Peter Figge encouraged him to establish his own brand. He officially launched Lepe Cellars in 2015, and opened a tasting room in Carmel-by-the-Sea in April 2021.

Lepe Cellars produces about 700 cases of wine annually — "mostly bigger reds" such as syrah, malbec, pinot noir and petit verdot, Lepe said, as well as chardonnay and sparkling wines.

"Carmel's not typically a place where you see a lot of Latinos," acknowledged Lepe, adding that he may be one of the few Mexican American business owners in town who doesn't run a restaurant. "If anything, that just encourages me to push forward."

In fact, he said, his status as a Mexican American vintner has helped him capture the attention of consumers. "Once they find out who I am, and my background, they definitely venture out of their way," said Lepe, who also serves as assistant winemaker at Soledad's Wrath Wines.

"I never thought I'd be a business owner, especially in this kind of industry," Lepe said, "[But] I feel proud to be in this position. I want to encourage others to follow, to branch off … I hope by sharing my story I can at least inspire other people."

How a Paso Robles Winemaker Grew His Brand

Like Lepe, Torres said, he never planned on becoming a role model.

"That was not a title I signed up for," he said. "People will say, 'I want to take a picture with you.' "I'm a winemaker. I'm not a photo op."

Torres grew up in Michoacán in western Mexico. After his father moved to Cambria in search of work, the rest of the family followed.

Without a social security number or a green card, Torres was unable to pursue his dream of becoming a police officer.

Instead, he wound up working at restaurants at age 14, waiting tables at eateries in Cambria and San Simeon while attending high school and local community colleges.

Torres credits winemaker Cris Cherry of Villa Creek Winery with fostering his interest in wine.

"Once I saw the creative escape, the outlet [wine could give] me," Torres said, his "entrepreneurial mind" went to work.

In 2003, Torres went to work as a cellar rat for the now-shuttered Garretson Wine Co. under Paso Robles winemaker Augie Hug, kicking off a decades-long partnership that saw him taking up the reins of Hug Cellars in 2015. But he longed to make his own mark on the industry.

After sampling wines from Spain's Piorat region at a 2005 Hospice Du Rhone event in Paso Robles, he decided to focus on Spanish varietals: albariño, carignan, tempranillo and the like. That year, Torres decided, "I could get a four-year degree with the money I have saved or I could do a four-barrel experiment" using grenache grapes from Denner Vineyard.

He bottled the blend in 2006, the same year he and his wife, Erica, were married. He released the finished product under the brand Bodega de Edgar — "bodega" means winery or cellar in Spanish, he explained — in 2009.

"Seeing that product go from the vine all the way to somebody's glass was really rewarding," Edgar Torres recalled.

After spending much of his career working for other Paso Robles wineries, including Jacob Toft, Hug Cellars and McPrice Myers, Torres decided in 2015 to focus full-time on Bodega de Edgar.

He bought his first commercial warehouse in 2019 — the same year that, after being undocumented for 25 years, he officially became a U.S. citizen.

"I had a five-year plan" to operate out of the warehouse to save money, Torres said. "Last year, there was an opportunity to buy a property and jumped on it. I never thought we'd grow so fast!"

Bodega de Edgar opened its tasting room on Paso Robles' west side in April. He's seen his business grow in other ways as well.

In 2020, Torres launched Straight Out of Paso, a "very accessible brand" with a name that invokes NWA's iconic hip hop album "Straight Outta Compton." The winemaker described it as "an homage to the region" and the French varietals such as cabernet sauvignon, grenache and zinfandel for which it's known.

Torres' latest label, Songs Wines, focuses on "100% varietal expressions," he said. "The idea is to make wines that are as memorable as the favorite songs you grew up with."

According to wine club manager Staci Helms, the three brands share a production facility on the east side of Paso Robles that doubles as the tasting room for Straight Out of Paso.

According to Torres, Bodega de Edgar produces roughly 4,000 cases a year, while Straight Out of Paso accounts for about 2,000 cases annually. The Bodega wine club has more than 1,000 members, with "the biggest chunk" of them coming from Southern California.

The winery is well regarded in the beverage industry, too.

Wine Enthusiast magazine gave Bodega de Edgar's 2019 El Cabrone Red a score of 92, and the winery's 2018 Tarragona Paper Street Vineyard Red earned Editor's Choice honors with a score of 95.

Although Torres is proud of his wines' performance, he said, "The only score I always worry and care about is the one in the bank."

"The biggest accomplishment for me is [being able to] sell wine on a yearly basis," he said.

The goals that matter most to him, he added, are "those simple goals that I made in life first — marrying the right partner, having the opportunity to have my kid grow up in my [own] house, not a rental," and owning a car that he can afford to fix, he added. "I accomplished those goals before I was 30."

His son, who is 8, "loves being around" the vineyard, Torres said, although he has yet to express an interest in enology. "I jokingly say that it's fine that he doesn't want to get into it but he needs to marry a winemaker at least," Torres said with a chuckle.

Although he's "been a little cautious of being boxed in" as "the Brown guy in the community," Torres said he's gradually come to embrace his status as a pioneering Mexican American winemaker and what it means to people, especially young Latinx entrepreneurs.

"The American Dream is still very alive," said Torres, who credits his success in part to his tireless work in the wine industry. "That is the reason we call this [country] the greatest country in the world: We can translate our poverty into something successful."