At an early age, Rolando Herrera, showed his ambition and can do attitude. From his arrival in the United States from Mexico at the age of fifteen, Rolando’s career in the wine industry is a tale of passion, determination, and the pursuit of excellence. Now his wines are poured in restaurants throughout the U.S.—and even at a 2001 White House event honoring former Mexican President Vicente Fox.
“I want to go back to Napa,” said Rolando Herrera to his father when he could not get his certificate from his school in Michoacán, México. His father told him that ‘you can go back when you are fifteen years old’. “In my old town in Mexico at that age you are considered as an adult,” said Rolando.
In December 1982, Rolando made a pack with few belongings and parted with a group of friends to United States. He arrived to his older brother’s house in Saint Helena and started to work as a dishwasher in a restaurant. He was washing dishes and going to school in the afternoons. “I made a promise to my mom,” Rolando said. “I am not going to the ‘Norte’ just to work, I will finish school.”
During the summer, Rolando took different jobs to help pay bills. In 1989, he met Warren Winiarski, founder and former owner of Stags’ Leap Wine Cellars, who hired him to help build a stone retaining wall. After that job, Mr. Winiarski offered him a harvest job, of which Rolando did not know the meaning. As soon they explained it to him, Rolando decided to work. “I was always curious about what was inside of the buildings and cellars, always curious about the buildings hidden behind the enormous trees,” he says.
Rolando loved his career in the wine industry from the first day. “This is beautiful, I found my home,” was Rolando’s feelings when he opened the doors of the cellars the first day at work. “I loved the smell, the darkness, the barrels, the big doors, everything,” remembers Rolando. “I had a million questions in a minute.”
He started washing barrels, floors, tanks, cleaning everything. “I enjoyed it and I wanted to finish a project fast enough because I wanted to know what else they want me to do,” he says. After two years, Rolando was promoted to a cellar master position.
Rolando did not drink wine or any alcoholic drink because his family had serious health problems because of alcohol. “I did not want to even try it,” he says of the wine that surrounded him at his job. It was a turning point in Rolando’s career and life when the winery owner, Mr. Winiarski, asked him about the wine. “Mr. Winiarski asked me ‘How do you expect to understand and appreciate the product that you work with every day?’” Rolando remembers.
Following the conversation with Mr. Winiarski, Rolando sat on wine-tasting panels at work and joined tasting groups. “Before I knew it, I was developing my own palate,” Rolando said.
After a few years of tasting wines, Rolando knew that wine would be his lifetime career and his passion.
Rolando left Stag’s Leap in 1995 with a goal to be more than cellar master. “It was really a hard decision,” Rolando said. “But I knew I had to pursue more.”
He became an assistant winemaker at Chateau Potelle Winery, where he was involved with the whole process of producing wine. During that time Rolando had the feeling of becoming a wine maker. “I had the desire to produce my own wine,” Rolando remembers. He knew that it would be very difficult to reach the job of wine maker in a winery - the only way was to make his own wine.
In 1997 he bought four tons of grapes and he applied all the lessons and experience that he gained through the years. He also implemented his ideas that he could not apply when working for someone else. Rolando shared his first Chardonnay with friends and restaurant owners. “All of them were very pleased with the wine,” he said.
Rolando’s intention was to sell his wine to the bulk market, where wineries buy surplus wine inexpensively to sell under their own label or to blend with other wines. “People told me ‘you are crazy, you need to bottle this,’” he says.
Rolando was not ready for such an idea, but after a few months of thinking and digesting the idea, he decided to embark literally in his ‘Sueño’. “One day I just woke up with ‘ganas de hacerlo’,“ Rolando says. “It has to be ‘Mi Sueño’ - it took me six months to make the wine but it took me only ten minutes to come up with the name’ he says.
Mi Sueño Winery started small, producing 200 cases a year. Today, the business bottles 5,500 cases per year. “The secret of success is to do something that you love and have the support,” Rolando states. “I have the support of my wife - it takes more than one to make things happen.”
Rolando’s wine was served at the White House in 2001 at an event honoring former Mexican President Vicente Fox. “That was huge,” remembers Rolando. The second time his wine was at the White House was last year at the Cinco de Mayo event.
“The future for Mi Sueño is to continue to dream,” he says. “Dreaming is free, the sky is the limit.”