The brewing bug bit Alejandro "Alex" Castillo Llama early. His parents, immigrant workers from Mexico, found work on a vineyard in Napa, California, when he was nine. He worked with his family, picking grapes from the fields.

Later, as a young man in the early 2000s, he spent a year working at two of the best restaurants in the country, three Michelin-starred restaurants in Napa Valley and New York City itself Star French Laundry. Returning to Napa, he worked in the vineyards, tasting rooms and cellars of several wineries. One afternoon in 2008, at a family barbecue, after buying a small batch of grapes, he bottled his first bottle of wine and shared it around the table. His uncle Oscar Llamas, owner of several auto body shops in town, took a few sips of the new wine and agreed to give him money to start a wine business. Just five years later, Llama Family Wines, headed by Alex, is producing world-class wines. Although Alex and Oscar don’t have their own fields to grow grapes, they purchase their fruit from the vineyard, where other members of the Camel family are employed to pick the grapes. Years of dedication to work in the wine industry have proven crucial to their outstanding success in the industry. “Knowledge is the most important thing,” Alex Liamas said. "Anytime you see someone come in and work quickly, efficiently, have skills and knowledge, you want to keep them. I think that's certainly the case with the Llamas.

He started in the restaurant industry , from the very beginning of business operations, to hospitality, to finally, how to choose quality wines that customers will love. Alejandro Castillo Llamas has had an in-depth understanding of the wine industry from the very beginning. (Image courtesy of Israel Valencia, ?_Israel Valencia) Each bottle features an iconic logo depicting a scorpion’s pincer legs and curved tail, a symbol reminiscent of his grandfather, Jesus Liama. A cow tag that Si gave to his grandchildren on his small ranch in San Nicolas de Acu?a, near Lake Chapala, Mexico. “Every Llama family bottle has it. Scorpion," Llama said. "It's a subliminal message to honor where I came from so that I can better understand where I'm going. ”

A baseball cap emblazoned with the Llama Family Winery logo, along with his grandfather’s cattle brand, recently joined the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Later this month, at The materials are on display in an exhibition called "Deep Roots," which is part of a rethinking of the museum's much-visited "Food" exhibition, which takes a look at Mexican traditional men and women. The woman, who has provided the labor and backbone of the wine industry for a long time, is now reinventing it as a professional agricultural consultant, winery owner, vineyard owner, scientist and entrepreneur in the industry

Llama wines all bear a logo, modeled after the cattle used on Mexican family farms (pictured above) (NMAH)

Gustavo Brambila in the 20th century. Landed in California in the mid-1950s, when he was about 3 years old. His father was a laborer named Bracero who worked in the orchards of Napa in the 1940s and 1950s. When we came here, the community was small," he recalls of a Mexican family with children in middle school in Napa. In the early 1970s, Brambilla began taking food science courses at UC Davis. Brambilla Using an old Spencer Laboratory microscope, probably dating from the 1920s, that had been given to him by a geology professor, he looked at everything from grapes to grass under the lens of his budding interest in science. His interest soon led to viticulture, and his training in laboratory and chemistry also opened the door to the wine-growing industry.

"I was going to get it. A bottle of juice was brought home by my father for me to taste," he said.

"It was the grape juice he pressed that day. I think this is the sweetest grape juice I have ever had. I put the cap back on the bottle and put it in the refrigerator.

So about two weeks later, my mom screamed because her refrigerator door blew open and everything inside shattered. So that bottle exploded in the refrigerator. I told my mother I don't know what's going on here, but I'll find out, and I'll let you know.

Brambilla had many mentors, including Mexican field or cellar workers he met through his father, a vineyard worker, or through his picking work. But eventually, he would meet and work for famed winemaker Mike Grgich, whose California whites famously topped French samples at a 1976 Paris tasting. It is this iconic moment that will propel the emerging California wine industry onto the international stage. In 1977, Grich hired Brambila to work with him on the launch of his own winery, Grgich Wines. In 1980, in Napa, California, Gustavo Brambila used a refractometer to check the sugar content in fruit. (NMAH)

In 1980, [Paris Tasting] French judges. I want to make the same judgment again," Brambilla said. "It's not the same wine, but different wines from the same winemaker. …They brought a bottle of 1977 Chardonnay to taste again in Chicago, and the results were still the same. It won first place again so I can give myself credit for making the 1977 Chardonnay.

Because I was in the middle, I didn’t realize it. So all of a sudden, all of the Hispanic individuals, the Mexicans, from the surrounding vineyards, working in the fields, noticed, and this is the only time, I can recall, that I was really paying attention to Mexicans and Latinos Viewing the eventual higher profile in the wine industry, Brambilla said:

By 1997, Gustavo had opened his own winery, Gustavo Winery, which was One of the first wineries in Napa to offer a tasting room to a new, younger clientele. There he would serve and showcase his wines, creating a new model for the wine industry that would make wine more accessible to urban areas. Today, Gustavo is a world-renowned wine consultant known for his entrepreneurial spirit and viticultural knowledge, which he extends to his vineyard management company. Of course, he could also tell his mother that the accumulation of gas from fermentation and the lack of a release valve in the grape juice bottle caused the refrigerator door to blow away. Brambilla recently donated his microscope to the Museum of American History. Ventura Gustavo Brambilla attributes his passion for science to this Spencer laboratory microscope as a gift from a university professor. (NMAH)

Growing up in Jalisco, Mexico, family and heritage were important to Amelia Seia, who reveled in the generosity of her grandparents’ farm and garden, picking fresh fruits, vegetables and Herbs are cooked with abuelita.

She came to Napa when she was 12 years old with her father, Felipe Moran Martinez, who was employed by a vineyard management company for the Mondavi Winery Plant grapes. As a young woman in high school and college, Amelia participated in pickets and police camps to give voice to the struggles faced by farm workers. Amelia and her father joined with the United Farm Workers, along with Cesear Chavez, Dolores Huerta and other activists, to organize Improve working conditions and pay wages for vineyard workers. She has been a voice for farm workers since the 1960s.

, she met Pedro Seia, whose family also came from Mexico to work in Northern California's booming post-Prohibition wine industry. The two married in 1980. After attending college in San Diego, Amelia and Pedro Chea returned to Napa and Sonoma to be closer to family and fulfill their dream of owning some family land. They pooled their resources and purchased land in Carneros, Napa Valley, in 1983. Her brother-in-law, Armando Seia, worked at nearby winery Duman Chandon and needed more Pinot Noir grapes. Vineyard manager Will Nord gave the Cejas an agreement for the plants they needed to develop their first vineyard.

Pedro and Amelia Ceja laid the foundation for the brand, launching it in 1999 and 2001. "KDSPE" winemaker Amelia Ceja (above: with her niece, winemaker Belen Ceja at a Ceja family facility in Sonoma, California) enjoys cooking and pairing her wines with traditional Mexican food. (NMAH)

Today, Ceja Vineyards is a family affair. Armando Ceja manages the vineyards and is the winemaker. Armando’s daughter is now a budding winemaker, and Amelia’s daughter and son are also in the business. Amelia relentlessly promotes wine while maintaining a commitment to environmental issues and social justice causes.

, but perhaps Amelia's best talent comes from the fresh knowledge and appreciation of home cooking she learned from Abuelita. At wine tastings at her home, she expertly pairs the Mexican dishes she prepares with wines from Ceja Vineyards. She creates cooking videos for the winery's website and shares recipes for her dishes, especially tortillas, a staple in Mexican households. The wooden tortilla press was a wedding gift vintner Amelia Ceja received from her aunt "Tia Tona". Ceja recently donated handcrafted tools to the Smithsonian. (NMAH)

As a bride, Ceja received a handmade wooden press from her aunt "Tia Tona" that she brought back from Mexico and used it both at home and in cooking demonstrations . Her last and final use of media was at a *** at the Smithsonian Institution, where she made tacos. Chea lovingly cleaned the woodblock printing press and donated it to the museum. It will now be on display along with other items that tell the story of Mexican and Tex-Mex food in the United States.

“Food: Changing America’s Table,” a new exhibition on immigration and food, opening October 25 at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., Brewing in America History, the history of eating and dieting, and the emergence of Mexican-American vintners. The American Food History Project Oral History Initiative has collected 12 other Mexican American stories and will soon be made available to the public through the Archives Center for American History. The Mexican Brewers Project receives federal support from the Latin America Initiative Consortium administered by the Smithsonian Latin America Center