President & CEO of Ceja Vineyards
Amelia Morán Ceja was born in Las Flores, Jalisco, Mexico. She immigrated to the United States in 1967 to join her father, a farmworker in Rutherford in the Napa Valley. On her first weekend, Amelia was in the vineyard, harvesting grapes alongside her family where she met her future husband Pedro Ceja. Amelia fell in love with grape growing, and throughout her teenage and college years during school vacations, she continued working in the vineyards gaining deeper understanding on viticulture and winemaking.
Amelia studied history and literature at UC San Diego, and in 1980, Amelia and Pedro were married. In 1983 Amelia with Pedro, his brother and his parents purchased their first property in Carneros in the Napa Valley. They planted their first grapes in the Carneros AVA in 1986, and Amelia, Pedro, her brother-in-law and his wife founded Ceja Vineyards in 1999. Today the family owns 115 acres in the Napa and Sonoma Valleys. Amelia has become an impassioned advocate for the value and fair treatment of farm workers, following in the footsteps of her father Felipe Morán’s work with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers labor union in the early 1970s. In 2016, Amelia received the Dolores Huerta Farmworker Justice Award for her successful advocacy for Worker Protection Standard on pesticides. Her leadership of Ceja Vineyards is also groundbreaking, as she became the first Mexican-American woman ever to be elected president of a winery in 1999. In 2005, the California Legislature recognized Amelia as “Woman of the Year” for “breaking the glass ceiling in a very competitive business.”
Ceja Vineyards produces 7,000 cases per year, her brother-in-law serving as winemaker. Amelia launched video blogs in 2008 on preparing Mexican cuisine and pairing it with wine, embracing both her Mexican heritage and American home. Amelia combines the best of what she finds in food and drink, tradition and innovation.