Sierra Rose was born in Orange County, California. She attended Catholic schools in Riverside County and after graduation, enlisted in the Army Reserves as a Psychological Operations Specialist. She attended the University of California, Davis and obtained a Bachelors of Arts Degree in History with a Minor in German. Sierra was drawn to history at a young age, on her mother’s side, she is a descendant of the Tapia lineage, one of the soldier families of the De Anza mission which colonized Alta California in 1775-6. Her father immigrated to the United States after WWII in 1951, and she remembers hearing his stories of war-torn Europe and living in a Displaced persons camp in Linz, Austria. Her families’ stories inspired and compelled her to study history and explore the circumstances and events that affected her ancestors.
Upon learning about her early Californio ancestors, she began a winery project to remember the legacy of her ancestor Tiburcio Tapia, who planted the first non-secular vineyard in Rancho Cucamonga, California. Sierra defines her wine project as an example of the hybridization which occurred in many Spanish colonies, the mixing of European and Indigenous cultures. Her vineyard in Calaveras County, CA retains an intact Indigenous Miwuk grinding rock archaeology site, called Chaw’se by the Miwuk people. The Spanish adapted a word close to Molcajete for the huge granite grinding rocks they found in various places – Metate. During her research for Spanish grape varietals for the vineyard, Sierra traveled to Spain over ten times and imported three grape clones into the country through the University of California, Davis, Food and Plant Services Quarantine and Introduced Species Program. Sierra attended courses in the UC Davis Wine Program.
Sierra returned fulltime to the University of California, Davis to pursue a post-Bac program in Classical Mediterranean History, focusing on the Romanization of Spain, after becoming inspired by the plethora of Roman architecture and artifacts she found in her wine travels through the country. She has studied Latin and Attic Greek, as well as German, Spanish, French, and Italian. Sierra traveled extensively throughout India on three separate trips, the last one with the University of California, Los Angeles, which culminated in a short film called Baba. Sierra is the narrator for this film. She has studied Yogic philosophy and is a current practitioner and teacher of Hatha Yoga. She was trained at the White Lotus Yoga Academy in Santa Barbara, California. And did her advanced 300hr training with the Yoga Den in Corona, California and various locations in India.
Sierra feels like she has almost come full circle in her hero’s journey, back to her origins and her ancestors, back to the village to share her experiences. She is currently working and researching for a museum in Calaveras County, her focus is the early Spanish-speaking peoples of California and their impact on the state of California, both in Northern and Southern California.
