A new report from City Journal says the vineyard management company hired to run field operations at a PlumpJack property in Napa County has a long history of employing illegal labor. PlumpJack is the wine business in which Gov. Gavin Newsom did not divest his stake when he became governor.
City Journal, in a piece by Christopher F. Rufo, Ryan Thorpe and Kenneth Schrupp published November 11, reports that PlumpJack contracts Renteria Vineyard Management to run field operations at the 129-acre Oso Vineyard in Pope Valley. The authors write: "Newsom's business has contracted the services of a vineyard management company with a long history of employing illegal labor." According to City Journal, neither PlumpJack nor the contractor disputed that the contract exists.
The story matters because it ties a sitting governor's business interests to a immigration-and-labor question he is regularly asked about. It also matters what the report does not say, and that gap deserves as much attention as the claim itself.
What City Journal Found
PlumpJack Collection of Wineries bought Oso in 2022 for $14.5 million, City Journal reports, citing the San Francisco Chronicle, and the group's Napa holdings exceed 400 acres. A PlumpJack website describes the contractor's founder, Oscar Renteria, as Oso's long-time vineyard manager, though City Journal says the relationship and its timing are unclear. His company, by its own industry profile, manages more than 2,200 acres with 80 full-time and up to 400 seasonal workers.
The magazine lays out a regulatory record. A 2017 Cal/OSHA inspection after an accident at one of the company's sites found 320 employees exposed and produced a heat-illness fine. City Journal says that file was reported destroyed after it made a public records request. In 2022, the Department of Labor found wage-and-hour violations involving 45 employees, with back wages and civil penalties. A class action over minimum wage and overtime was filed in September 2024, and a separate worker suit filed in April 2026 was settled in September.
The sharpest material is human. A former long-time employee, who says they are in the country illegally, was asked whether the company knew many workers were illegal. The answer:
"Absolutely, of course. There was a lot of them."
City Journal also cites a 2017 interview in which Renteria told the American Immigration Council, "Many of our farm workers have what I call a complicated immigration status." The magazine reads those remarks as close to an admission; that is its interpretation of the quotes.
Where the Evidence Gets Thinner
Readers should know the limits. The report says a contractor employs illegal workers; it does not, in the portions reviewed for this story, say Newsom's wineries hire them directly. Breitbart ran the story under a headline saying Newsom builds a wine empire using illegal migrant labor, a broader claim than the City Journal text supports. We have not read Breitbart's full article.
A figure of 80 percent, offered for unauthorized workers on vineyard management crews, comes from an anonymous vineyard management company owner, who said, "I think it's 80 percent." It is not drawn from records. Separately, the Migration Policy Institute estimates 27 percent of all Napa agricultural workers are unauthorized, a different measure that is not a direct rebuttal.
City Journal's search of Department of Labor files, run across more than 400,000 entries with two large language models, found three H-2A guest-worker filings listing Oso as a worksite in 2022 and two in 2023. None came after 2023, and none named the contractor or PlumpJack as employer. Two of the 2023 applications were filed by Mendoza Bros. Harvesting under a worksite called New Piña Vineyard Management, a link to Oso that the magazine itself calls unclear. We did not see whether the authors checked the software's hits by hand. The former employee's further claims about overtime, safety and a recruiter in Mexico rest on that single source.
No investigation, charge or fine against Newsom or PlumpJack appears in the reporting reviewed. We did not see a response from the governor's office, but the copy of the City Journal text we received was cut off partway through, so one may appear in the unread portion.
The Policy Backdrop
In September, Newsom signed A.B. 1890, raising state money for Napa farmworker housing to as much as $500,000 a year, City Journal notes. The state began funding at $250,000 in his first full year. County figures put occupancy of that housing at about 96 percent. The Newsoms reported at least $11 million in income from 2019 through 2024, according to Los Angeles Times reporting cited by City Journal.
Breitbart says Newsom allocated $35 million in February 2026 for legal services for people facing deportation. That figure comes from Breitbart's own earlier coverage, which we have not verified.
What Comes Next
No hearings or enforcement actions are scheduled. The next things to watch are whether Newsom's office, PlumpJack or the vineyard contractor answers the report on the record, and whether state or federal officials follow up on the 2017 file City Journal says was reported destroyed.
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