Vineyards
Robledo and the Chain Saw
They laughed in the vineyards of France when Reynaldo Robledo picked up a chain saw to show his technique for grafting vines onto old rootstock. What could this man from California, speaking Spanish and heavily accented English, teach them about growing grapes? They snickered when he claimed that the newly grafted wines would produce a healthy harvest the following year. They stopped laughing two weeks later when cutting and vine had bound together and had begun to bud.
Robledo came to the grape trade a little later than those who grew up in the French vineyards. He didn't meet his first grapevines until 1968, when, at sixteen, he arrived in California from Michoacan, Mexico, with a work crew consisting mainly of relatives. After his first day of pruning, he realized that he had found his life's work.
"I wanted to know everything about grapes," he recalls. Within eight months, the teenager was in charge of thiry-six workers, including his own father. "I worked long, long hours learning everything." He spent many evening hours teaching himself to drive unfamiliar farm machinery. He learned about pruning and grafting, about the April bugs and the May fungus, about cutting costs by doing everything at the right time. He took courses at the University of California at Davis but says being in the vineyards was the best education.
"Working in the field is the way you learn. I know from the leaves what fertilizers and chemicals they need. I need to look at the soil. I don't need a computer on every plant."
He became known as a man with an almost magical ability to make vines healthy and productive. He explains, "I evaluate each plant before I prune. The plant has its own energy, and you have to leave enough canes to use that energy. Some people don't understand that if a plant is fifteen years old, it has a lot of strength, and they cut back too much."
Today, Robledo manages several acres for other growers and owns over 200 acres of vineyards in the wine growing regions of Sonoma, Napa, and lake counties. Each of his parcels is named for his family--Rancho Maria for his wife, Rancho La Familia for all of his children, Rancho Emiliano for his youngest son. "For me, the important thing is that I can train my family and that they want to stay in the business.
The Robledo Story:
Robledo Familia
The Winemakers
Vineyards / Ranches
