Amelia Moran Ceja is the president of an award-winning winery in Napa Valley. Not only is she the first Mexican-American woman ever to carry that title, but her life story that led up to it is pretty special.
Ceja is from Jalisco, Mexico, and moved to California with her pops as a kid to pick grapes. What the family lacked in resources they made up for in enthusiasm about the future – they really loved the wine industry, the rolling landscape, and the idea of the American dream. Ceja wanted to link her Mexican roots with her love of wine. To those that discouraged her from this path, she simply smiled and kept working.
“I don’t want to be homogenous … We’re making both cultures better,” she says.
As a young adult, she pooled resources with her husband and family bought a chunk of land that they knew would be the perfect conditions for Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. But for a while they couldn’t afford to plant the grapes, so they rented the land to people with cows and lived in a one-room home until they’d saved enough to finally begin Ceja Vineyards.
Now their 113 acres produce some of the best wine in the valley. Every part the entrepreneur, innovator and foodie, Ceja pairs the wines with her favorite Mexican dishes and produces a YouTube channel to reach a global audience.
“We built our brand by making wines not for the wine critics, but for our own palates,” Ceja said in an interview with Diversity Woman. “Also, we demystify the wine experience. A lot of people are intimidated in a tasting room, but we make it fun. When anyone walks out our door, if we’re not on hugging terms, we haven’t done a good job.”
Read for more? New Belgium Brewing is a beer company entirely owned by its employees.
