“Wine is not just in a bottle magically.”

These words, spoken by a subject of a new documentary about Napa Valley’s wine industry, invite viewers to learn more about the people who put California’s wine into bottles.

“Harvest Season” was first aired by PBS’ Independent Lens series on Monday, May 13, 2019, and is available for online streaming at pbs.org.  Alongside gorgeous footage of California’s most luxurious wine country, Bernardo Ruiz’s film follows three people whose stories illustrate the roles that Latinos have played in the development of the region’s premium wine industry.  We meet René Reyes, a migrant vineyard worker who leaves his family in Zamora, Mexico, to spend five months pruning and harvesting in Napa Valley; Gustavo Brambila, a vineyard worker’s son who came to California as a child and now is proprietor of Gustavo Vineyards; and Vanessa Robledo, a fourth generation grape grower and wine entrepreneur who came to the wine business as a child while translating for her father.  

Filmmaker Ruiz allows the stories of these three families to unfold gently and avoids making heroes or victims.  In the process he reveals the complicated relationship between René’s vineyard work, the $14 a day he pays for room and board, the $100 bottles of Cabernet his work produces, and the gifts he brings back to his daughters upon returning to Zamora.  Gustavo and Vanessa’s stories began much as René’s, but portray two families that have established deeper roots in California’s wine country. In Gustavo’s case, we find him not only obsessed with the pruning technique of the vineyard workers he now employs, but also laboring in the cellar and lab to achieve the most pleasing blend – which he considers his art.  Vanessa’s is perhaps the most “American” story in that she is a powerful business woman who has left behind the traditional expectations of a daughter in a Mexican family. After overseeing the huge expansion of that family’s winery, she went on to become majority owner of a successful cult winery and now is a busy wine business consultant.  Today, alongside her mother, Maria, she manages the same vines that her grandfather taught her to tend as a child.  In forming this 100 percent women-owned and -run business, she is as much a wine country pioneer as her ancestors.

“Harvest Season” Is not about the aspirational wine lifestyle portrayed in the pages of glossy magazines or at the polished tasting room bar.  Rather it shows the lives of real people and their connections to an agricultural product. Their lives, like the vines they tend and fruit they harvest, defy predictability and are affected by countless influences.  For the vines, this point is driven home most dramatically by footage of the 2017 wine country fires that damaged crops and claimed at least 44 lives, as well as scenes of Vanessa contending with a vineyard virus. As for the people, their stories are told before a backdrop of labor shortages, H-2A visas, family relationships, immense economic inequality and unstable immigration and climate policies.  To his credit, director Bernardo Ruiz avoids the political sledgehammer, preferring to allow reality to speak for itself. One of the film’s ancillary personalities is Angel Calderon, a humble man who has dedicated himself to providing dignified shelter and food for the migrant vineyard workers. A potent scene shows him standing alone in the empty dining hall while a television plays images of Donald Trump pontificating about the American dream.  The contrast speaks for itself.

It was Vanessa Roblado who said, “Wine is not just in a bottle magically.”  She continues, “If you go out and spend a season in the vineyards to be able to appreciate the man or the woman who is farming those grapes, at that point, you will have true wine appreciation.”  “Harvest Season” is for everyone who appreciates California wine. Meeting these three people and knowing their stories will only deepen your admiration for what you encounter in the glass.