De La Cruz explains that he grew up surrounded by wine culture. His father worked in the fields, and as a kid, De La Cruz would sometimes join him. He remembers hating the hauling and pruning. “I remember one day I even dreamed of weeds,” he says. “I was like this is horrible I’m never going to do this again.” He realized there was a disconnect between Latinos and wine — not because Latinos didn’t like wine, but because the industry wasn’t speaking their language, literally or culturally. So he began to try to bridge the gap with the people closest to him: his friends.
Soon, he noticed a shift. “Now they set up the wine tastings and then they invite me,” he says. “You see the confidence when they show up to a tasting room.” He says now when they order something and a winemaker is explaining terminology they’re like “‘Oh yeah, I get that or yeah, I know that.’” For De La Cruz, that shift — from intimidation to representation — is what he says Ludor is built around. He calls his tasting a “door opener,” a way to give second-generation Latinos the tools and comfort to enter a space that has historically overlooked them.
Christian Miller, research director at the Wine Market Council, says De La Cruz’s experiment goes much deeper than him and his growing brand. The wine industry is facing falling sales volumes, excess supply, and a generational challenge as younger consumers drink less wine. Miller thinks winemakers like De La Cruz can bring new life. “Hispanic Americans are important and are going to become a lot more important,” he says. Latino consumers are one of the most important, and overlooked, opportunities for the wine industry.
California lawmakers adopted a $356 billion state budget late Monday that would largely avoid or delay billions of dollars in social service cuts Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed last month.
Then, the (real) budget negotiations can begin.
The vote was only a formality, because lawmakers are constitutionally required to pass a balanced budget by June 15 each year to continue collecting their pay. They have until the end of the month to strike a deal with Newsom before the new fiscal year starts July 1. State lawmakers agreed with Newsom’s plans to raise taxes on computer software, reduce tax credits to businesses and extend a tax on health care providers.
But in the next two weeks, legislators will also have to settle their differences with Newsom on healthcare cuts, funding for schools and homelessness and more.
Democratic leaders on Monday deemed their legislative spending plan a fiscally sound proposal that would reduce future budget deficits while maintaining some services for low-income Californians. “We have talked in previous years and again this year about the balance between compassion and fiscal responsibility,” said Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, an Encino Democrat who chairs the Assembly budget committee, during a budget hearing Monday.
Faced with federal funding cuts under the tax and spending law President Donald Trump signed last year, Newsom proposed several measures to limit healthcare coverage for undocumented immigrants as well as refugees, asylees and human trafficking survivors. Top legislative Democrats want to delay those cuts by a year while looking for alternatives to soften the impact. Newsom also wants to raise the monthly Medi-Cal premium undocumented immigrants pay from $30 to $50. But lawmakers prefer waiting him out, proposing to leave the decision to the next governor.
Shasta County supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday not to defend Measure B against a lawsuit filed by the California attorney general.
The charter amendment, approved by voters in the June primary, would make sweeping changes to the county’s elections system. Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit sued shortly after the election, arguing several provisions violate California law, including requiring hand-counting of ballots and restricting voting by mail.
Supporters urged the board to defend the measure during Tuesday’s meeting. “Your disagreement with the tenets of the measure, which has been voted into law, should not affect or diminish your overarching role of supporting the electorate’s will to implement Measure B,” supporter Deirdre Holliday told supervisors.
County Counsel Joseph Larmour asked the courts in March 2025 for permission to stop processing the ballot measure, arguing it was unconstitutional and would be misleading to the public. But a judge denied the request, and the county later dropped the lawsuit.
