When Jose Luis Herrera left his hometown of El Llano, Mexico, to work at a St. Helena chicken farm, he had no idea how long he would stay. His plan resembled those of thousands of Mexican immigrants who came to the U.S. to looking for work; Make some cash to support the family back home.

“I hoped to make some money to support my children,” he said.

That was 40 years ago. St. Helena doesn’t have any commercial chicken farms left; the ground is too valuable as vineyard property. But just as St. Helena blossomed into a grape-growing and wine capital, Herrera’s life changed in ways he couldn’t foresee.

Herrera, now 66, has watched his family flourish here. His son Rolando Herrera owns and operates Mi Sueño Winery, one of only a handful of Latino-owned Napa wineries; son Ricardo assists Rolando at Mi Sueño; son Tony is an assistant winemaker at Swanson Winery; and son Jose works as a sanitation technician.

While the family is firmly rooted in the Napa Valley, the seeds of its success are passed on to the town where it all began — the farming community of El Llano in the state of Michoacan, Mexico. Nearly every December, the Herrera family returns to El Llano to celebrate the holidays and contribute to the economy of the town.

Signs of the Herrera’s generosity, and the generosity of other El Llano families now in the United States, are visible throughout the town: In the main plaza, three park benches display the Herrera family name; cars and trucks drive along freshly-paved roads in town; residents worship in a newly-renovated church.

Giving back

In the heart of Napa’s Old Town neighborhood, Fuller Park is a stately square block with mature trees shading lawns and picnic areas. A new playground for  children is in the center of the park.

Every spring, families with roots in El Llano gather at Fuller Park for a fundraiser.

The event supports El Llano’s annual December fiesta, as well as other restoration and beautification projects such a maintaining El Llano’s main church, plaza, community hall, roads and a trail — El Santo Cruce — that runs from the town to a large cross on a hill that overlooks the valley.

“Everybody gets together to make tamales or posole to sell them in the park,” says Jose Herrera, eldest of Jose Luis Herrera’s sons.

Family and friends donate “whatever they can give” to support projects in El Llano, Herrera said.

Usually the priest from the town is invited to the fundraiser, and collects donations. Herrera said that when the committee of Napa-based leaders send the money to El Llano, they ask for proof it is being spent on the projects they expect.

“We ask for receipts,” said Herrera. “We want to make sure that money goes to what we pay for.”

Coming to America

El Llano, roughly the size of Yountville, is nestled among hills that are part of Mexico’s massive Sierra Madre.

It is known as a relatively wealthy town, and one where youths are taught early on that the surest way to be successful is to travel to the United States and find work. Nearly 90 percent of the town’s inhabitants have emigrated to the United States, to places such as Napa and St. Louis, Mo., according to many El Llano residents.

Jose Luis Herrera joined the trend when he was 18 years old. He entered the U.S. under the federal Bracero Program,  which brought thousands of willing hands to work the fields and orchards of California.

“(The life in El Llano) was very bad,” said Herrera, while sitting in the kitchen of his Browns Valley home. “We were poor. We had no shoes, no food. Sometimes, we would have milk. I used to harvest corn, and garbanzo beans. We used to live off of that.”

Making 20 pesos a day in El Llano provided only the basics of survival for Herrera and his then-newlywed wife, Maria de Jesus Herrera. When he first heard about the Bracero program, he jumped at the chance to make more money.

Herrera found seasonal work picking cotton and other crops outside cities such as Lodi, California, and San Antonio, Texas.

In 1968, when Herrera was in Mexico, a friend suggested he come to St. Helena for work. But Herrera lacked the papers that would allow him to stay in the United States permanently.

Herrera paid a coyote — a person who helps people make the perilous journey into the U.S. illegally — to help him cross the border. Herrera, who is now in the country legally, landed a job at a St. Helena chicken farm, he said.

“I would make $58 a week, send $50 back home and it left me with $8 to live with,” he said.

Herrera later found work at a local nursery, where he struck up a friendship with a manager who eventually helped him bring the rest of his family to Napa in 1975. He lived and worked in the valley for another five years, when he and his wife decided to return to the place they knew growing up.

A dream realized

For Jose Luis’ son Rolando Herrera, growing up in St. Helena was fun. He made a lot of friends, he learned English and became accustomed to life in the U.S., he said. In 1980, when his father decided to move the family back to El Llano, the fun stopped.

“He brought us back into Mexico,” Rolando said.

But after the years in El Norte, he said, “It was impossible to keep us in Mexico.”

At 15, Rolando begged his parents to allow him and his older brother Jose to return to St. Helena to study and find work. Rolando promised that he would not neglect his studies, and his father consented to the move.

When Rolando returned, he and his brother struggled for a few years.

“We rented an apartment, (sometimes) we slept in the car,” he said. “It was tough, we kept at it. I was determined to go to school.”

Herrera eventually graduated from Napa High School in 1986 and found work washing dishes at Auberge du Soleil. Later, he caught on as a line cook at Mustard’s Grill. It wasn’t until he turned 17 that he first began working in the wine industry.

Herrera’s first job offered nothing in the way of wine-industry glamour.

He was hired at Stag’s Leap Wine Cellar to build a stone wall around the home of winery owner Warren Winiarski. From that job, Herrera earned a chance to gain steady work in the vineyards.  From there, Herrera worked as cellar master, assistant winemaker and director of winemaking for companies such as Stag’s Leap Wine Cellar, Chateau Potelle, Vine Cliff Winery and Paul Hobbs Consulting.

But it wasn’t until 1997 that Herrera’s dream came true: owning his own wine label.

Herrera opened up Mi Sueño Winery and began bottling chardonnay. Herrera started small, producing 200 cases a year. Today the business bottles 5,500 cases per year and produces highly-regarded pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay and syrah.

Herrera operates Mi Sueño out of a warehouse on Napa’s  Enterprise Way. Bottles of Herrera’s best cabernet sauvignon sell for $125.

One wine in particular has become a source of pride for Herrera’s family. Herrera named the wine El Llano — a blend of cabernet sauvignon and syrah — and sells it for $40 a bottle.

“It’s become very popular because it’s one of our least expensive wines,” Herrera said. “It’s our homeland, it’s where are roots are. There are some people ashamed to acknowledge that they are from a little poor town in Mexico. I’m not.”