Fraternity-Testvériség, 1958 (36. évfolyam, 1-11. szám)

1958-01-01 / 1. szám

FRATERNITY

3

THE AUTHENTIC HARASZTHY STORY

ABOUT “THE FATHER OF MODERN CALIFORNIA VITICULTURE” By Paul Fredericksen

(Reprinted from Wines and Vines, 1947)

(Continuation)

Chapter 3

EARLY YEARS IN SONOMA

The cozy town of Sonoma fondly looks back to the time when it was the center of vinicultural enterprise for the whole State of California. That period began when Ágoston Haraszthy decided to move from San Francisco to Sonoma’s more genial climate. The brilliant Hungarian Colonel was determined to demonstrate, by example and instruction, that California could become a wonderland for grapes and wine.

In January, 1857, he bought about 560 acres of gently sloping land northeast of sleepy Sonoma town. The land began on the floor of Sonoma Valley and ran up into the foothills of the Mayacamas Mountains that enclosed the valley from the east. It had on it some old wooden buildings and what was called “Sonoma Vineyard” — about 16 acres containing 8,000 vines. Most of the vines were fairly young, but about 1,300, Haraszthy wrote later, had been planted in 1832 — or 1834 — by an Indian trying to establish a home and get a land grant from the ruling Mexicans.

Northwest of the town lay the well-kept vineyard of General Mariano G. Vallejo, about the same size as Haraszthy’s. Vallejo, who had come to Sonoma as military colonizer of Northern California under Mexican rule, had grown grapes perhaps as early as 1834, and by 1841 had produced wine and some spirits. He now had a fine wooden house, and fruits and crops of all kinds in which he took much pride.

Sonoma Valley — Valley of the Moon — was eleven miles long and two to three miles wide, but in all that area the vineyards, including Haraszthy’s and Vallejo’s, did not cover more than 50 acres. Practically all the vines here, as elsewhere in the State, were of the Mission, or “Californa”, variety, the sort brought from Mexico by the Mission padres in 1769 or 1770. Fewer than a dozen other varieties could be found anywhere in the valley. Sonoma’s wine production was a trickle, compared with Los Angeles County’s small river.

What appealed to Haraszthy, and caused him to settle at Sonoma, was the healthy condition of all vines, the certainty that fresh grapes could always be sold at a good price in San Francisco — a short boat ride away —- and the taste of the wine from Sonoma Vineyard. He had sampled some of this wine, produced in a crude way by previous owners in 1855;

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