Fraternity-Testvériség, 1962 (40. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1962-12-01 / 12. szám
6 FRATERNITY esteem, and presented him with a service of dinner silver, heavy and ornateley carved. The mills of justice ground slowly, the head coiner at the Mint, a Belgian, was to be convicted for stealing a large sum in scraps of gold. Another Mint official, wrongly supposed to be a defaulter, brought up two blackmailers on the charge of extortion. After having found himself accused by newspaper headlines, the trial that dragged on for three years as a cause celebré, finally absolved Colonel Haraszthy. During this time he had not been wasting his time in the city. With his sons he left for those waiting acres in Sonoma. In eleven years the Colonel was to own 6,000 acres in the “Valley of the Moon”, establishing the largest vineyard in the world, the Buena Vista. On a rise he built a classic statue-crowned Pompeiian villa, with formal garden bowers, a fountain and island-dotted ponds fed by springs. He planted 80,000 more vines, tripling the grape acreage of the county. Dogged and studious Attila set out the plants, bringing them in from his father’s other ranches. Large tracts of these vines Attila had planted on farms which were soon bought up by some leading people of San Francisco’s society. Many jurists, military officers, members of patrician families, merchants, all followed Haraszthy, whose admirers were Americans of taste and scholarship. His second son, Árpád, had zeal, much brilliance and gaiety. He was later one of the founders of the San Francisco Club, and personal friend of Samuel Clemens, better known as the author Mark Twain. He became an acolyte in the making of French champagne at Rheims and Epernay, enhancing even his own father’s fame with his American-made champagne called “Eclipse”. Success flowered from Ágoston Haraszthy’s energy, but it was an energy that more and more flourished from work. In the spring of 1858 he planted 30,000 more vines, and wrote a “Report on the Grapes and Wines of California”, which reformed the procedure of wine-making. His triumphs at State Fairs, winning a long list of prizes, were continuous. He made gigantic barrels and vats of redwood, and these dominated the exhibition halls, garlanded with ribbons like pedigreed bulls. Gardeners came from afar, from Cucamonga by Los Angeles, and San Benito to view the plants in the Haraszthy nurseries with their million rooted cuttings in grapevines, in hundreds of varieties, suitable for a diversity of soils, temperatures and altitudes. He was everywhere looked to for expert advice, and it was prodigally given. By 1861 he was at the zenith of his prestige — he was the top dog of the American wine industry. Buena Vista became the somatic center of viticulture, the supply base of vines for the entire Pacific Coast, from Mexico up to Washington State! Governor Downey of California sent the Colonel to Europe as State Commissioner of California’s newest, thriving industry. Haraszthy underwrote the expenses himself. He explored the Old World’s finest vineyards with thoroughness and speed, and he amassed a dozen cartloads of young figs, chestnuts, almonds, olives, lemons, oranges and pomegranates — all of which he succssfully introduced in California. He shipped ahead not less than 300,000 cuttings of vines, with unheard of varieties from Tokaj to the Caucasus, from Syria, Egypt and Mesopotamia. The potential value of all this immensity of flora was to be thought
