Michoacan, Mexico is home to the Monarch Butterfly, mountain forests, wildflowers, the historic Morelia, and the lesser known tierra caliente, the hot lowlands between the Sierra Madre range and the Pacific Ocean. Here the old men sit in the shade, away from the oppresive heat, at rickety tables playing dominoes and drinking beer, when they can afford it. 
Young boys lead herds of cattle out the dusty roads in the morning, and back again in the evening, because the teenagers and young men have all left for "el norte" .
In a tiny village here, Los Cuachalalates, Ulises Valdez grew up. Life was the equivalent of about two generations prior here in the United States; there were few cars, few homes had televisions, even fewer had telephones. Electricity was just arriving. Life was simple, and the people had a simple happiness about them. When I first met Ulises, he could recite the names of all the people in the village.
Ulises' father died, while working in the fields near Bakersfield, when Ulises was just seven. Ulises
was one of eight children. Unluckily, the oldest were girls. At ten years old Ulises left for Mexico City, to work with an Uncle in a mercado, or flea market. Though times were hard, Ulises still remembers with a smile selling women's lingerie as just a boy. After a few years here, Ulises went to the northern state of Sinaloa to work cutting sugar cane.
Ulises is known almost exclusively by his first name. He has the good fortune to have a uniuqe name, and it fascinates Americans more accustomed to a Jose or Pedro. Ulises captiolizes on this distinction in an almost political manner, eager to meet and endear himself to everyone, shying away from nothing. Some would call him a showboat, but Ulises pulls it off.
Ulises was sixteen when we crossed paths at my father's vineyard in Dry Creek Valley. It was December 2, 1985, grey, drizzly; the first day of the pruning season. Ulises lied about his age, and did a good clean job, and was able to stay to completion. When the work ran out, I 
was able to get Ulises a job with a friend and neighbor, Bob Polson of Lake Sonoma Winery. Ulises moved from a run down trailer park in Cloverdale, to a small shack in Dry Creek Valley, and eventually to what amounted to a camper shell where he lived with his brother Nicolas for a year or two.
Times were rough in the vineyard business, and, just out of school, I managed to pick up a lease on a property in Dry Creek Valley, whose owner had run out of options, and was ready to abandon the vineyard. It rained almost every day that February, and we often had to prune in the rain to get the job done before bud break, speeding around the vineyard in a Honda Civic, trying not to get stuck in the standing water. One day Ulises approached me with the offer that he would not take any pay for the entire season. and that after harvest, he would take his earnings and reinvest them and that we would form a partnership, which I agreed to.
That thirty acres would grow to nearly six hundred acres farmed by the time the Valdez and Florence partnership ended in early 2003. Now sole owner, Ulises farms over eight hundred acres as Valdez and Sons Vineyard Management. Ulises married in 1989, and has four children today. He attained US Citizenship in 1996.
There seems to come a time in the grape growers career, when he develops a taste for wine, and begins to look at his crop in a different light. Ulises was able to adjust to farming grapes as a commodity, to wine-growing. Growers such as Kent Ritichie of Poplar Vineyards introduced Ulises to some of Sonoma County's finest winemakers, such as Mark Aubert, and Paul Hobbs, in the late 1990's. Ulises magnetism, charisma, combined with hard work, continued to open doors. Today, as Ulises enters the wine business, he has at his disposal an arsenal of advice, support, and influence.
Ulises decided to make wine in 2004, and as fate would have it, he came to his old partner, to buy Zinfandel from my Rockpile Road Vineyard. These days, Ulises spends more time on the cell phone, but still remembers where he came from, and, as always, has big plans for the future.---Jack Florence, Jr.