Father of California Wine

Agoston Haraszthy / Google Image

A few weeks ago, I promised to tell the story of the “Father of California Wine,” the incredible Agoston Haraszthy, who brought the Zinfandel grape to California and founded Buena Vista, the winery that makes some of the best wines now available. Some readers have repeatedly reminded me of that promise, and I herewith make good on it.

Haraszthy was born in 1812 in the region of Backsa, Hungary, which is now part of Yugoslavia. His family was country gentry and also winemakers of some renown. At that time, Hungarian wines were better known and more respected than they are now, especially the Tokay dessert wine, favorite of the Russian czars, whose Slavic spelling of the Latin title “Caesar” they bestowed on themselves tells you a lot about their self image.

Haraszthy studied law in Vienna, but quit for the more adventurous life of an officer in the Guards of the Emperor of Austria, a political realist and survivor who was both the nephew of the guillotined Marie-Antoinette and the father-in-law of Napoleon. Haraszthy himself had a foot in each camp, being both an aristocrat and a revolutionary, somewhat like the better know Lafayette. While an officer in the Imperial Guard, he secretly joined the Hungarian nationalists under Kossuth (for whom the town in Mississippi is named) and eventually had to flee to America to escape the heat generated by his revolutionary activities.

Upon his return to Hungary in 1842, Haraszthy sold his family’s estate and brought his wife and parents to America, where he bought 10,000 acres of land along the Wisconsin River. There he began calling himself “Count,” which some historians say was a title he simply expropriated, but coats of arms have always been cheap, and titles were easily purchased in those days. Haraszthy also founded a town with the unpronounceable name of Szepta, which is Hungarian for “beautiful view.” Later, more practical and less esthetic settlers renamed it “Sauk City.”

Haraszthy planted vineyards of European vinifera grapes on his new land, but they all died from the harsh winters and vine diseases. Undaunted, he started a ferryboat line across the Mississippi and also ran a steamboat from St. Paul down to Galena Ill., supplying meat and grain from his farms to the troops of the Northwest Territory. Quickly wealthy, he entered politics and helped Wisconsin gain statehood. The climate, however, game him asthma, so in 1848 Haraszthy emigrated again to the healthier climate of Southern California.

He chose to go the “easy” southern route via the Santa Fe Trail. His mother, another real survivor, who had married the U.S. attorney for Wisconsin, and his wife and six children, accompanied him. By then a big man with coal-black hair and a bushy beard, Haraszthy was wagon master a la Ward Bond of a 20-wagon train of Conestoga prairie schooners pulled by a team of oxen. He led his wagon train safely through the marauding Indian tribes of Kansas, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, and arrived in San Diego in December of 1849. It was then a town of 650 people.

His friends in Wisconsin got word that Haraszthy had been massacred by Indians en route and sold all his businesses and lands in Wisconsin and sent the money to his “widow.” Haraszthy took the proceeds and bought the estate of the former Mexican governor near San Diego.

There he planted yet another vineyard, this time with vinifera “mission” grapes that had been brought to California from Spain centuries earlier by Franciscan friars. This time his vines lived, but the wine was so mediocre that he vowed to import the best European vinifera grapes as soon as he could afford it. It took him nearly a decade.

In the meantime, Haraszthy and his family planted orchards, opened a livery stable and butcher shop, and began speculating in land. Again, he quickly became wealthy and entered politics, and by 1850 was elected the first sheriff of San Diego County, later city marshal, then delegate to the state assembly. He began calling himself “Colonel” instead of “Count.”

His reputation as heroic pioneer began to slip a little, and his first real scandal arrived. His stepfather, as chairman of the city council, approved Haraszthy’s bid, which was double that of any other, to build a county jail. Its walls promptly fell down, but the taxpayers paid Haraszthy to rebuild it anyway, a monument to his gifts of persuasion.

On his first trip north to meet the state assembly at Vallejo, he saw the Gold Rush in full bloom. To an entrepreneur like Haraszthy, it seemed the Promised Land. The climate also looked better for vineyards, being sunny but less hot –– similar to the best wine lands of Europe. As he put it, the problem at San Diego was that the winters were so warm that “my vines don’t get the rest.” He also sensed certain social differences between the two regions, and introduced a bill to divide California into two territories, north and south. The bill failed but it was probably as sociologically sound then as it would be now.

Still pursuing his dream of making great wine in America, and a little money on the side, Haraszthy sold everything in San Diego and moved his family to the San Francisco Bay area for yet another new start.

Next week: Haraszthy move to the Valley of the Moon, marries his sons Attila and Atpad to the governor’s daughters, plants the first zinfandels at Buena Vista, goes broke and moves to Nicaragua to make rum, and is last seen walking alone toward a stream full of alligators.

John Hailman of Oxford is a regular contributor to HottyToddy.com on two subjects: Law and Wine. Now retired from both his “day job” as a federal prosecutor in Oxford after 33 years and his “night job” of 25 years as a nationally syndicated daily columnist in more than 100 daily papers on wine, food and travel for Gannett News Service and the Washington Post, Hailman will cover both topics under the titles of The Legal Eagle and Wine Tips of the Week. HottyToddy.com will also run periodic excerpts from Hailman’s upcoming book of humorous legal stories: From Midnight to Guntown: True Crime Stories From A Federal Prosecutor in Mississippi. Hailman now teaches Federal Trial Practice and Law and Literature at Ole Miss.