Her Stanford degree in biological sciences brought Violeta Barroso to a competitive job at a biotechnology firm in Manhattan after graduation. But the shock of September 11, 2001, led her back home to King City, Calif., where she founded Mar y Sol, a line of wines born of struggle and success.
“I grew up in the Central Coast, around lots of vineyards, lots of work. And there’s Latinos involved all throughout the process: from picking to processing, and in the cellars, to the lab work,” Barroso says. “Part of my wine is the celebration of people like my dad, people like me.”
When Barroso is not monitoring the acid levels of her wines, she’s out marketing them at banquets and fund-raisers, restaurants and theater debuts. Featured at more than 50 restaurants and stores in California, Mar y Sol wines complement la comida Mexicana—an oaky merlot built for moles, a guayaba-touched chardonnay for ceviche. “I wanted to make a real, Latino-influenced wine that my parents would drink.”
Mar y Sol (sea and sun in Spanish) was inspired by Barroso’s family and named after her niece, Marisol. Barroso’s parents were college-educated in Mexico. Juan was an attorney and Eleazar had been a nurse. But credentials alone were not enough to support a family. The Barrosos came to California shortly after Violeta—the fourth of five children—was born. On this side of the border, Juan became a farm worker.
Barroso spent her early years in a migrant tenement. The complex was crowded with children her age, the sons and daughters of those who picked the Valley’s grapes and spinach. “Only a few of us made it out,” she says. “A lot of the kids who grew up here are in prison, jail or are involved with drugs or gangs. It was a battle for our lives.”
Concerned for her children’s education, Eleazar found a teacher who was willing to tutor after school; the Barroso children began to thrive academically, earning community accolades and entrance to top universities. “Education played such an important role in our family’s growth in America, what we were able to achieve here,” Barroso says. “Any challenge that comes my way, I know I can rely on something I learned at Stanford to help me through it. I’m so well prepared to take on anything.”
—CRYSTAL CARREON, ’98
