Fields of Dreams

With hard work and unsinkable optimism, Reynaldo Robledo went from migrant worker to owner of a California winery.

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Very Hard Workers

eynaldo Robledo is driving his Toyota 4 x 4 along a quiet farm road through a Sonoma Valley vineyard. Squads of pickers move down rows laden with plump fruit, stopping to wave at the man behind the wheel. As Robledo returns their greeting, his eyes glitter with emotion. "I was asking the people working here," he says, "and they tell me, 'I made yesterday over $200.' That makes me feel good." When Robledo arrived in wine country from Mexico 39 years ago, he made just $12 a day, more than ten times what he could earn in his home village. His English is still heavily accented, but his horizons have broadened immeasurably: As the first former migrant worker in the United States to found his own winery, Robledo, now 55, has enriched both himself and his adopted country. His saga helps explain why -- more than a century after a sonnet welcoming the world's huddled masses was engraved beneath the Statue of Liberty, and despite the current debate over immigration -- America still hasn't locked the gates.

Robledo stops the truck in front of a warehouse and introduces his son Everardo, who is busy loading cases of Pinot Noir grapes onto a flatbed trailer. "I'd shake your hand, but mine's all sticky," says the 31-year-old, his accent pure California.

Down the road, Jenaro, 28, hails his father from a golf cart to tell him he thinks a nearby patch of Chardonnay is ready. Robledo, who owns these fields and a dozen other tracts in Sonoma, Napa and Lake counties (a total of 220 acres scattered across America's foremost viticultural region), delivers 80 percent of the grapes he grows to big producers such as Gloria Ferrer, Benziger and Kendall-Jackson. His greatest pride, however, is the wine he bottles with his kids.

Each of his seven sons and two daughters participates in the business, which now sells 1,500 cases a month. Robledo Family Winery has won gold medals at international competitions; critics use terms like aristocratic and sensual to describe its offerings. The company owes its success largely to the skills and passion Robledo has passed on to his progeny. But one factor predominates. "The good thing about my family," Robledo observes, "is that they are all very hard workers."